Having a visually striking and aesthetically pleasing website is always a must when creating one for your business. While having strong messaging in your website can help conversions, it is often the visual and functional aspect of it that convinces viewers to stay a little bit longer scrolling through your pages. This is where a great website design comes into play, as a website’s design helps it to be more appealing and functional to its viewers. For new website owners who may not know where to start, we have rounded up important key factors to consider when designing a website. 

Design with an audience in mind

Your target audience will be the ones who will get to experience your website first hand. This is why it is important to think on their terms. Here is where you think about their pain points, what they are looking for to address those, questions and queries they might have, and an idea of their buying habits. These are just some of the information you can consider that can help you define your audience better and help give you a clearer picture of what your website should look like. 

Balance of form and function

Having the best looking website is always a must, but if it sacrifices speed of loading time and ease of navigation, then the design would be pointless. Add just the right amount of visuals to keep loading time short and play with options when it comes to the color scheme and layout to match your brand’s personality and help you stand out from your competition. 

Good design must also be very functional and since this is a website with many different pages, it must be easily navigatable by first-time users. Ensure that the most relevant information would be seen easily by viewers. Keep in mind that since the average viewer has a limited attention span, that they should be able to see the most important parts of the site. This is where hierarchy comes into play because adding all information in one place can be very confusing for website visitors. 

Create call-to-action buttons

One of the most important aspects of navigation in your website is a clear and distinguishable call-to-action. This is the best way to turn website visitors into actual leads and to potentially make a sale. Placing the call-to-action buttons in key locations in your website can be the push that your visitors need to make that purchase. Call-to-action buttons can range anywhere from: sign up, learn more, buy now, get a quote, contact us and more. 

Link your social media pages

In building brand awareness today, it is not enough to just utilize one channel. Make the most out of the website by also linking your other social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Websites are more informational so giving the visitors a chance to visit your other channels through social media platforms, allowing for two-way interaction between businesses and customers. Doing so is a great way to create another channel of communication with your users and consumers. The key is to create as many touchpoints with your customers and leave a lasting impression. 

Keep it SEO-friendly

It is not enough to just have a website. Having one that is SEO friendly is a huge step in being more visible to your visitors. Search engines like Google place a huge value on how SEO friendly a website is when it comes to how it ranks websites on its search engine results pages. 

Things like ensuring your website text has the right and relevant keywords you are targeting, adding alt text to images, and aligning your meta titles and descriptions according to best practice all point towards good SEO. Related to SEO is building great quality content, so building your website with good and direct-to-the-point content in mind would be most ideal in getting the most out of the traffic. 

At the end of the day, websites are there to generate web traffic for your business and turn them into customers. Having great web design is just one of the ways that you can help achieve this goal. What better way to start than by having experts create a compelling and unique website design for your business. 

With 25 years of experience in the industry, iManila is committed to providing our clients with innovative digital solutions. We are a full-service website development and digital marketing agency ready to help you with your web design, hosting, and digital marketing needs. See what iManila can do for your business today!

From the various methods of attracting customers online, search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the best ways to generate online sales. For it to work efficiently, however, it has to be implemented correctly.

Whether you’re planning to hire a digital agency or simply want to make an SEO strategy work by yourself, being aware of the current trends is needed to help you gain brand awareness. Below are the most popular SEO trends you can use in 2021.

• Mobile SEO

As smartphones develop and become easier to use throughout the years, more and more people do most of their searching through a mobile device. For this reason, making your website as mobile-friendly as possible is important if you want to attract customers online.

To know how effective your mobile site is, you can try performing Google’s free mobile-friendly test on your website. Once done, all you need to do is to check the report on your Google Search Console.

• Voice search

Another trend that is also popular nowadays is the voice search technology that Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, and Amazon’s Alexa provide. According to Google reports, at least  27% of the entire global population has used voice search on their mobile phones.

Additionally, ComScore, a media analytics company in America, has also stated that more than half of smartphone users are now engaging with voice search technology this 2021.

Since voice search optimization is constantly growing, we recommend optimizing voice search and researching various keywords that people use in everyday conversation. Also keep in mind that voice searches tend to do better with longer, more natural-sounding phrasing.

• Video advertisements

According to WordStream, a popular online advertising website, YouTube is currently ranked the second most popular search engine after Google with over 1 billion users. For this reason, this is a great way to market your brand to make web traffic efficiently.

To optimize your video content for search engines, all you need to do is optimize your video channel name and description. With that said, make sure that the description is not overloaded with keywords and directly tell viewers what your channel is all about.

• Featured snippets

If you aren’t familiar with this trend, featured snippets are basically the brief content that is shown in Google for any given search. Not only is this beneficial to potential clients, but also to your website as well.

To get the featured results, you can either provide an answer to a specific question or make bullet points for your content.

• Internal linking

Internal Linking has been an essential part of SEO for decades. This method basically helps  users find the pages they need when scrolling your website. To make it more easy to use, we recommend following these linking techniques:

• Content hubs: This is a one-pillar page that curates the best of your content in one place. It also gives your customers what they want which helps with brand engagement. 
• Faceted navigation: This refers to the filters utilized by sites that allow shoppers to narrow a product set by color, style, or other attributes.
• Linkpacks: This contains a pack of links at the bottom of your product pages that link to similar products. 
• Related hyperlinks: This is usually located in your blogs which links to other similar content.

Importance of SEO in digital marketing industry

SEO is getting more complex as we know it, so it is important to be up to date with the current trends. Luckily, here at iManila, we create various SEO strategies that can support your business objectives – whether that means driving awareness, generating leads, or increasing sales.

With 25 years of experience in the industry, iManila is committed to providing our clients with innovative digital solutions. We are a full-service website development and digital marketing agency ready to help you with your web design, hosting, and digital marketing needs. Inquire now and message us today!