The World Wide Web was born in 1993 when the web went public and truly became “world wide.” The number of websites grew from 130 in 1993 to more than 1,600,000,000 in 2019. That means 1.6 billion websites are competing for your attention at any one time.
Websites in the early 1990s were primarily informational. These days, however, the web is used for much more than disseminating information. Personal websites have now evolved to social media powerhouses where users post photos and videos in real-time. Rather than a static business website giving information, many businesses now provide links to crowd-sourced review aggregators, interactive maps, online reservations, and payment systems.
Anyone with a website can benefit from website design services. A website design and SEO company can turn an ordinary website stuck in the 1990s into the premium website people in 2019 have come to expect. Here are five examples of premium web design services provided by website design and SEO companies:
Online Retail
Online retail is growing. In 2018, e-commerce grew by about 15%. The only way to participate in this growth is to provide online retail services to customers.
An equally important statistic to growing your own online business is the conversion rate. Conversion rate refers to the percentage of online shoppers who actually follow through with an online purchase. The average conversion rate in the United States in 2018 was 2.63%. There are two conclusions that can be drawn from this. First, while this may seem like a small number, a website that does not provide online retail services to its customers is leaving money on the table. Even if a business only gets 100 visitors per day to its website, this means between 2 and 3 lost sales per day, or as many as 950 lost sales per year. Second, if only 2.63% of shoppers turn into paying customers, the easiest way to increase the number of sales is to increase the number of shoppers. Thus, online retail tools are often combined with other premium web design tools, like search engine optimization (or SEO) to draw more shoppers into a website.
Customer or Client Portal
People have become accustomed to accessing personalized data via the web. In an average day, a person may use web portals to check a bank balance, schedule a doctor’s appointment, pay the power bill, and look up the delivery date for an online purchase. Web portals are also a way to maintain contact with customers. Premium web design services can include the creation of customer or client portals.
Custom Content
While there is absolutely nothing wrong with stock photos and clip art, customers and clients will recognize the quality and care that goes into custom content. Far too many websites are populated with mushy marketing-speak that leaves customers wondering “what does this company do?” Sourcing custom content from a premium web design company can help tailor website photos, designs, and copy to show customers the uniqueness of a business and build the business’s brand identity.
Search Engine Optimization
Sometimes it seems more like an art than a science, but there are techniques to improving a website’s search engine rankings. These techniques include optimizing a website so that the relevant information is indexed, optimizing the selection and use of keywords, and measuring results so that the website can be adjusted to improve search engine placement. In 2016, only 41% of marketing firms used SEO, which means that businesses that use SEO have a competitive advantage.
For more information on premium web designs and services, rely on Studio 98 to transform your online business.