Transcript: Meet Virginie Dorn, CEO of Business Website Center discussing the four pillars of quality web design for all size-businesses.

Today, she is discussing the four most important elements to consider whether you are redesigning your website or creating a brand new one. There are four elements which you should really spend time considering.

The most important factor is this: Does your website look good? That’s it.

Does it look good? Is it breathtaking? Is it compelling?

We talked to our friend in blogs and face-to-face with our clients of the importance of that first three seconds. Dow do people perceive you and your business what they first arrive on your website?

A good idea is to get feedback on how your website looks. Ask friends and family, ask co-workers, clients because it’s often difficult for a business owner who has looked at the same website for months, sometimes for years to have a candid and fresh look at their site. They’re used to the colors, they’re used to the call to action, they’re used to the overall feel of the website. If you are “big enough” to ask for input, be willing to accept criticism from people you trust on how your website looks.

Continuation of transcript: The number two important element is, is it easy to use? Are we getting your customer or prospective clients as quickly as possible, to where they want to be and where you need them to be. How is it to contact you? If it’s a shopping cart, how is it… How easy is it to buy something? Are you putting hurdles in their way? Are you… Or making it easy for them to shop with you? For instance, if you’re selling services, how easy it is for them to get to that specific services they’re interested in? Perhaps you’re a massage therapist and you have a special type of massage you provide. How easy it is for this client to go to that page? The whole page when you look at it, it’s like freeway science. It is where people go to see where we need to go next. Not all the answer should be on your homepage. Otherwise, your homepage will be huge. The homepage is designed to get them to where they need to be.

The third point that is very important to consider is, does your website have responsiveness to it? Is it responsive to mobile devices? We have an entire blog dedicated to responsive design and what that trend is and how it affects your search engine optimization. In a nutshell, responsive design is the ability for your website to detect which screen size your client is using. Are they on an iPad? Are they on an iPhone? Are they holding it portrait or landscape? Are they on a regular computer? Is it a big screen? Is it a small screen computer? So it respond according to the screen size. So responsive design is not just important for practicality, it’s… Again it’s practical if it’s responsive on an iPad, so people don’t have to maximize or minimize items. But it’s also very important to Google and Yahoo and Bing, it is now part of a algorithm. If you don’t have responsive design on your website, you will be penalized with your ranking.

Number four is about how useful is your content. It’s okay your website is easy to find, it’s beautiful, it’s easy to get to where we need to go, but now they are there and is the content explaining exactly what you do. Do they kind of have to guess what you’re trying to say. Are you playing with words too often? So again, is it useful to your audience? Is your content right on the money when it comes to communicating to who you’re trying to communicate to? Is it assertive enough with enough call to action without being salesy and pushy?

We have another blog just on content alone and the importance of content marketing. So the four important factors, you may want to write them down. So number one, does your website look good? Number two, is it easy to use? Number three, is it responsive? Number four, how good is your content? If you take those four different factors seriously and address them individually, you will have a successful website. Google will take notice of it, but also your prospective customers. Again, they’ll be able to be impressed by the design, they’ll be able to easily get to where they need to go, they’ll be able to see it on their iPhone or Android phone or iPad or tablet, and again, they’ll be interested in your content. Those are the foundation of a successful website, the four pillars you need to consider. I wish you a great week. Just think of your website more often. Don’t let it collect dust here on the Internet. If you have any questions give us a call. Take care.