Web design in Columbus.

“I need to start talking to Columbus web design companies to get a website designed for my business.”

If you’ve ever had that thought, then congratulations! You’re taking your first step into the digital age and you’re immediately moving ahead of one group of competitors:

Shockingly, over a quarter of the companies you’re competing with right now don’t even have a website, so your decision to get one (or to improve the one you currently have) instantly puts you ahead of them.

But what about the 73% of companies that have already brought web designers on board? Right now, they may be ahead of you. But with NEWMEDIA – the premier web designers in Columbus – you’ll create a business website that puts you leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. Let’s find out what we can do for you and, crucially, why getting professional web design matters.

These stats on Quora are illuminating in a few ways, but there’s one of the three to which we want to draw your attention – 75% of people judge your company’s credibility based on its website design.

Let’s say you work with a Columbus web design agency that’s capable of building stunning and functional websites. A visitor arrives at your new website and instantly sees the effort that’s gone into it. The branding is on point – and matches what they’ve seen in other channels – and it’s easy for them to find what they want.

Instantly, that customer feels they’re looking at a credible business that puts its best foot forward.

Now, imagine that you’ve knocked together a quick and easy website.

It looks okay and just about functions, but if you look beyond the surface, it’s clear that it’s falling apart at the seams. Again, visitors take that in. And if you’re presenting a shoddy website, they’re going to assume that the services you provide are just as shoddy.

Credibility tanks.

You lose the potential customer. The point is that having a website built by a custom web design company is one of the most powerful influencing forces in the online world. Use that to your advantage – design a great website that makes the 75% of people who’ll judge you based on your website feel impressed about your business.

Moving away from the purely visual, there’s another aspect of web design that’s vital:

How the website makes people feel. And feel is all about one thing – the user experience.

Deliver a great experience (fast loading, simple navigation, and a modern site), and you have users who are happy to keep browsing. But give a visitor a bad experience, and they’re likely gone forever:

Those stats from User Guiding cover several reasons why somebody might bounce away from your website, often never to return.

Slow loading is the killer. If your site takes more than a few seconds to load, 88.5% of your potential customers will decide not to wait because they know there are other sites out there (i.e., your competitors) that load faster. Bad navigation is another major problem – over 60% of people wave bye-bye if they can’t find what they need on your site quickly enough.

And that’s the point – your website design influences how a visitor feels about your brand.

If you deliver a user experience that leaves them feeling confused or frustrated, those are the emotions they’ll associate with your Columbus business. They’ll go running for the hills. But with good web design focused on enhancing the user experience, you make people feel comfortable, happy, and trusting – all major factors in moving them toward buying from your business.

Let’s talk about a vital part of the online puzzle that we haven’t covered yet – your digital marketing strategy.

When you think of “digital marketing,” you probably think about the ways a digital agency can create more exposure for your business online. Search engine optimization to rocket you up the rankings. Paid advertising to get people with high buying intent to click through to your website. Social media marketing that makes your brand shareable and comment-worthy.

They’re all important.

And they all lead to your place – your website.

Imagine that somebody’s checked you out on social media and they’re impressed by what they see. Naturally, they move on to your website because they want to learn more and, potentially, contact you about a service or buy from you. Then they see it – a shoddy website that’s a poor reflection of what they say on your social media pages.

All of the online marketing services you use don’t mean a thing because they’re built on a wobbly foundation that makes customers bounce away almost as soon as they arrive. And that applies across the spectrum of digital marketing. High Google rankings don’t mean a thing if the website a searcher lands on looks (and feels) terrible.

Your paid ads may have the most enticing copy in the world, but it’s not going to lead to conversions if the site the person you’ve tempted lands on fails to back up the claims in your ad. The point – everything you do in digital marketing (and we mean everything) comes back to your website’s design. It’s your foundation. And you need to have that foundation in place before you have a chance of getting customers through online marketing.

Most people access your website from a mobile device:

Why does a logo matter?

The answer is simple – it’s all about brand recognition:

This survey from Zippia reveals that the majority of people (75%) recognize brands based on their logos. That’s far ahead of visual style (60%) and the voice they use to communicate with customers (25%). In other words – a great logo sticks in the memory and makes you instantly recognizable to your customers.

And if you think about it, that makes sense. If we were to say the words “Disney” or “Coca-Cola,” we’d bet dollars to donuts that you can instantly visualize the logos of those two major brands.

You want the same for your Columbus business, and that logo needs to be prominent in your web design. NEWMEDIA’s graphic wizards can create a logo that makes you recognizable to your target audience.

We’ve already touched on why you need a website that looks great on mobile devices when talking about responsive web design. Remember – about 55% of the traffic that comes to your site arrives from mobile devices.

Now, let’s dig deeper with a few stats from Search Engine Watch:

Let’s get the negative out of the way first.

A staggering 61% of people will wave goodbye to your site if they can’t find what they need using a mobile device. And they won’t spend a lot of time searching, either. You get seconds to show them the way on mobile, or they’re gone forever. Now, the positive – over two-thirds (67%) say they’re more likely to buy from you if your site delivers a mobile-friendly experience. Thus, the case for quality mobile websites is clear. You need them if you want more people to buy from you. It all comes back to the credibility issue we spoke about earlier – customers judge your site (and your business) based on design, so you need to give them what they expect to see. NEWMEDIA makes sure that happens with our mobile web design services. And if you really want to push the boat out on your customer’s mobile experience, we offer mobile app development, too.

You’ve heard the old philosophical conundrum before – if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Let’s paraphrase that for web design:

If your business has a website that nobody visits, does it even exist?

We’d argue that it doesn’t. Even the most stunning design in the world can’t create a great first impression or boost your company’s credibility if you have no traffic coming to the site. Solving that problem is the role of search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO exists to ensure your site reaches the people it needs to reach when they look for you in search engines. It runs the gamut of services – link building, content creation, and technical SEO (such as metadata). All of these are aspects of building a successful website, and they’re all things that NEWMEDIA can do for you once you have your new site up and running.

Sure, they claim that they’re “doing digital marketing.” You’re automatically doing some form of digital marketing if you have a website, after all. But there’s no plan. There’s no route to ensuring their snazzy website, with its great design, can reach the eyes of as many people as possible.

You’ll be in the same boat if you get a website built but don’t invest anything into creating a strategy to serve it. And that boat leaves you lost in the digital ocean without a paddle.

So, once you’ve worked with NEWMEDIA to create a stunning website, stick with us, and we’ll show you how to build the strategy that supports it. Hint – it takes more than SEO. With us, your website becomes the foundation that supports everything you do online, from SEO to social media and paid advertising.