When considering website design, you might think that ensuring that it looks sleek is all there is to it. However, the user experience is now a huge part of your ranking capability within Google’s SERPs.

Everything from the speed of the site to how easy it is to navigate from one page to another all attribute value to your search success. Without a site that is easy for your audience to use and navigate, you will likely see low levels of traffic and high bounce rates.

An after-thought

Too many brands fail to consider their SEO strategy until after the website has been built and is live. However, it is crucial to establish an organic search strategy alongside your web build plan. This will allow you to build your website with your search objectives in mind, improving your ability to rank and be found on Google once live.

Fundamentals of SEO-friendly website design 

The very basics of an SEO-friendly website entail creating a sitemap which is easily crawled by Google’s spiders to make connections between the content on your website and user searches, using relevant domains, both as your primary and any subdomains, using a good CMS and ensuring your hosting service is platform-specific.

Benefits of a considered design

By creating your site with these core elements alongside a user-friendly design, you are more likely to retain the visitors that you attract. Your design can attribute value to your ability to rank and as a result increases your visibility to potential customers.

A successful website design will be responsive, which ensures that the content and the site navigation work seamlessly across a multitude of platforms. This allows your customers to access it however and whenever they like and still receive the experience they expect.

You should also take this time to look into your site analytics and understand how the majority of your audience access the site. This could determine your initial focus if budget or time constraints come into factor.

For example, if the majority of your customers access your site via mobile, you should ensure that this is not a second thought when building your site. Make sure all of the information can be accessed without excessive swiping and scrolling.

A seamless customer experience

A website that appears poorly constructed is slow, difficult to use and has no consistency across fonts and colours can instantly drive customers away. Not only is this annoying to customers but also makes a business appear disorganised and untrustworthy.

Your website end goal will typically be some sort of conversion, whether a sale, an enquiry or finding and using a particular piece of information.

With this in mind, the user journey and navigation should be organised and ensure that users can easily move from one page to another, gain further information through internal links and find their way back to the home page.

An ineffective navigation will only be emphasised by poor design and will ultimately result in a distracting website which will lead to cart abandonment and high bounce rates.

To create a seamless experience, you must consider every page and the overall journey within your site, alongside all of the elements that allow this to occur with ease. This includes reducing the length of the buying cycle, reducing acquisition cuts, cutting customer churn down and managing the lead nurturing time to occur faster and easier.

By improving your user experience through design, your website will be able to rank higher within the SERPs and will likely see an increase in sales and leads, repeat custom, improve brand loyalty, better word of mouth and a booster customer lifetime value.

If you would like to talk to a member of the Ghostfoundry team about optimised website design, drop us a line here.