Cape Cod Web Design Services
You can have a great website that represents you well, produces results, and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
In the old days, people found you in the Yellow Pages, but the world – and your competition – is on the internet.
Web technology has gotten more affordable, even putting your site in the hands of millions of smartphone owners.
If you don’t have a website, you’re at a competitive disadvantage, especially if you’re in a tourist-driven area like Cape Cod.
If your site is old there’s a high risk that it will not look as good as the competition, causing you to lose business unnecessarily. For an awful lot of people, your website will be their “first impression” of you.
What makes for a great website?
Modern website design fulfills expectations; visitors to your site will be expecting two things, and, if you give them those two things, you’ll gain a third.
- Your business website has to be attractive; it has to be pleasing to the eye.
- Everyone who comes to the website will be looking for something… a product, a service, information… something. They have to find it quickly.
- If your site looks good and is helpful, your business instantly gains credibility.
Looks Good + Easy to Use = Credibility. That means more business!
Your Business Website has to Look Good!
If you have a website that was created years ago you may be at a disadvantage, since older sites can look, well, old. Like a storefront covered with peeling paint.
Many older websites are built on outdated technology, too, resulting in being hard to read / use, especially on small devices (like phones).
We will build your website using the most current technology and techniques.
Your Website has to be Easy to Use
Website visitors are in a hurry; within a second or two of landing on your site they need to see something that answers their question or points them in the right direction.
How long do you have before you lose someone?
“…a stunning 55% spent fewer than 15 seconds actively on a page.”
Tony Haile, in Time Magazine article “What you think you know about the internet is wrong.”
We will make your website easy to understand and “get” in a glance, making things easy to find quickly.
Your Website needs to Create Credibility
Remember the saying, “You only get one chance to make a first impression”? The website design for your business must present your company in a professional way and create that great first impression. The reaction you want is, “This looks nice,” combined with “looks like they know what they’re doing.”
We will help you create your desired image.
Website design MUST include mobile devices
It isn’t enough to have a website that looks good and is easy to use on regular computers. In a trend that began a few years ago, mobile devices are rapidly turning into the most important platform.
Find more statistics at Statista
If your business website is not designed to work well on mobile devices, you will instantly lose potential customers. No one has the patience these days to use two fingers to expand the text on your site so they can figure out what you offer. And they don’t need to have the patience, either, because an alternative provider is just a click or two away.
What do I need to do to have a great, competitive, website?
You provide the information, we do all the work.
We ask a lot of questions about you, your business, and your goals, and we do research.
What do you want for your company?
- What are your business marketing goals?
- How much do you want to spend on marketing? (We work within your budget.)
- How much work are you willing to put into marketing your business? (Do you want to do most of it yourself?)
- What are your long term goals for growth, and how do they factor into your site?
What are your goals and objectives for new website?
- What’s the purpose of your website and how does it relate to what you want for your company? Is it “just to show we have one and are a real company?”
- Or do you want to “do better than your competition?”
- Do you want to get more business, or is it enough that your customers can see that you have a site?
- Do you want a business website that ties into other social media marketing?
- Do you want to be able to do your own updates, changes, additions?
Who uses your website? What are they looking for? What do they want?
We like to build “profiles,” or “personas” of your most important customers.
Who is your target audience? This is important; you want the content on your site to be a “good fit” for the people who will buy from you.
HERE’S A HINT: Your website isn’t about you.
Sometimes it helps to start with the opposite: who won’t buy from you? Answer that and you’ll be on your way to defining who will.
Once you have the list of potential customers, prioritize it; of all the types of people who will buy from you, which types of customers do you want the most?
Put together a “persona,” one for each of the most important types; you’ll almost certainly have two, and it can go up from there.
“That’s why it’s so crucial to craft your website’s design, content, and experience with your business’ buyer personas in mind.”
From Hubspot: “How to Design a Persona-Centric Website Experience”
Let’s say you sell athletic equipment. One of your primary personas might be the mom or dad of a high school student. A persona related to that one might be teenagers who play a sport, and another related persona might be coaches. How about a persona for men who play in an “old timers league?”
You get the idea. If you have an existing business, start with your existing customers.
Competitor websites are important to your success
Understandably, your first reaction might be, “How, exactly?”
Visit your competitors and do an honest appraisal of each site.
- What about their site works well?
- What do you like about it?
- What don’t you like?
- Would someone find what they want quickly?
Some of that information is critical for us as we design your website (this may seem obvious, but not all website designers think this way: we want to be sure your new website includes lots of things you like).
Now think about how your business website design can, and should, be both different and better. For example, is there a particular product or service that you both offer, but their site barely covers it? That may represent an opportunity for you to shine.
In the very competitive world of internet marketing and SEO, their weaknesses are a great chance for you to rank higher in the search results.
We target your business keywords
Intelligent use of keywords is just one factor in your strategy for getting your business seen by Google and the other search engines.
A “keyword” is not necessarily just one word, it could also be a short phrase.
“Your SEO keywords are the key words and phrases in your web content that make it possible for people to find your site via search engines. A website that is well optimized for search engines “speaks the same language” as its potential visitor base with keywords for SEO that help connect searchers to your site. Keywords are one of the main elements of SEO basics.”
Definition provided by online marketer Wordstream.
Your site will have pages that focus on your key offerings. We’ll “optimize” each one of those pages for a specific product or service you offer.
To do that well, first we’ll work with you to create a plan that will result in a proposed set of pages, each corresponding to one of your core keywords. The visual representation of this is called a “site map.”
Site maps are not just useful to you, either. We’ll create an online version of the site map for the search engines, because it helps them understand who you are, and what you’re about.
