Once you take your business online and launch your products/services by means of your website, you start thinking about marketing your offerings and the ways to reach more and more people. Have you ever wondered how you tend to overlook an important aspect in this whole procedure? It is the importance of web design in marketing.

In your marketing campaign, the foremost step is to bring visitors to your site. However, once the visitors land at your website, you need to retain them for sometime so that they get interested in your offerings and explore your site to find out what else is up for grabs. Here comes the importance of website design. Unless you design your website in such a way that it attracts the viewers and make navigation across your web pages a hassle-free affair, the visitors won’t think twice before switching over to another site. So, it becomes extremely important to hold the attention of the viewers and make them stay for a while at your site. The more these people explore your website, the more chances you will have for getting these leads converted into sales.

These days, the user has the right to utter the last word. It is rightly said by many that the customer is the king. So, to make your marketing campaign a success, you need to keep the users satisfied. Remember that an attractive web design that speaks of quality will go a long way in not only getting your brand established but also creating a positive impact on the web surfers. It will not be an exaggeration to say that a good website is similar to a fine storefront. Having a well designed website can make a huge difference by converting even a casual surfer to a loyal and serious customer of your products/services.

Considering how important web design is for your marketing campaign, here are a few tips to keep in mind:

• Keep the navigation simple and the functionality user-friendly. You should not compromise on these two factors for achieving artistic excellence.
• Don’t use huge pictures or too many nested tables as these slow down your web pages’ download speed.
• Design your site in such a way that most of its features are supported irrespective of the browser that’s used. It is wise not to design your website having browser-specific functions. This is because if one browser supports a particular feature, there is a high probability that the other browsers won’t support that feature.
• Finally, design your website for all resolutions* and all browsers. Make sure that the site also supports all color-depths. If people find that your web pages look good with their own resolution and browser, they will feel “at home”. This in turn will increase your chances of getting a better response.

  * If you want to stick to one screen resolution for your website design than I would suggest you go for the 1024*768, as this is the most popular screen resolution world wide.

In order to make the most of your marketing plans, ensure that you design your website keeping the above mentioned points in mind. Never forget the importance of webdesign in marketing as it plays a key role in getting you near your targeted ROI (Return On Investment).

Are you satisfied with your website’s design?

Recommended Reading:

Determinants of Successful Website Design: Relative Importance and Recommendations for Effectiveness

The Importance of Web Design in Successful Online Marketing

In this consumer driven world, the social media has emerged as an important place where people connect with others, share their views and opinions about a wide variety of things and give their feedback on products/services that they have found either useful or worthless. So, with the advent of social media, it can be said that the power to decide and influence which once rested with the large organizations has now shifted into the hands of the individual participants.

With its unlimited potential, social media has emerged as an effective tool for branding. If you can spare some time and effort, you can reap incredible benefits from social media. The best part is that you don’t need to shell out any money for getting your brand established by means of social media.

In the competitive world of the present age, you need proper branding for your products/services to get noticed and hold on to your loyal customers. If you want to stand out from the crowd and excel, you can’t ignore branding and that’s where social media plays an important part. Once you start participating in the various social media online, you will be able to create an effective branding for your offerings by talking about your products/services and asking the readers’ feedback. As the other participants of these social media connect to you and understand what you have to offer, where you are coming from and what your future plans are, they will start developing a strong association with you. As these people refer you to their friends who in turn refer your brand name to their own network, you will be able to reach a wide audience without any extra cost. When someone will ask these people about a product/service that you offer, chances are high that your brand name will get recommended. Once you establish such a loyal audience, you will not need to worry much about losing your brand name with the ups and downs of the market. In brief, social media can be an effective tool in paving your way to success.

Though social media is very effective for branding, the same doesn’t hold true for advertising. This is primarily due to the nature of the social media. People usually come to network with people and share their concerns, views, opinions, likes and dislikes at these places. As the basic mood is to mingle with people and get to know what their views are, commercialism takes a backseat. People participating in these social media are not inclined to buy. So, these are not good places to invest money for advertising your products/services. I can say this surely as I have wasted some money advertising my products on a popular social media. After being successful with branding my products using this new age media, I thought of going ahead with my advertising campaign. The biggest mistake I did was to ignore the basic mood of people who use these social media. I didn’t give too much of a thought on the fact that why would someone coming to interact with people be interested to buy a product, the information of which is unsolicited in most of the cases. Well, I learnt my lesson the hard way around.

To conclude, I can vouch for the efficiency of social media for branding. However, the same can’t be told when it comes to using social media for advertising.

What do you say? Have you ever advertised in any Social Media websites and got good results? If yes please do share your views. If no, still please share your experiences.

Here are some simple steps that will help your website marketing campaign during the economic recession period:

• Make your clients happy: Always try to think for your clients and how to make them happy and satisfied. Remember that it is easier to hold on to your present clientele than making new ones.

• Have useful content: Analyze your site to find if each web page sounds like the ideal sales letter or not. If not, you have work to do. Edit, re-edit or re-hash the content so that your aim of converting the leads into sales is achieved. Constant improvements of your site’s content will not only perk up your search rankings but will also help in better conversions.

• Go for Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Put useful and unique content on your website and ensure that the major search engines are crawling your site. However, don’t go for tricky stuffs that may get your site penalized and banned.

• Keep a track of your expenses and the results: It is necessary to keep a track of what advertising costs you are incurring along with the effectiveness of your ads. If your ads are not getting your leads converted into sales, abandon it. During recession, there’s no sense in spending money on something that fails to produce a return. However, keep the time taken by your customers to react to your ads in mind. If someone decides to buy after 4 weeks of time, deleting the ad after a week will not be a sane decision. So, the bottom-line is to spend smarter during the period of recession.

• Stick to the fundamentals: Some marketing methods have weathered the storm and still hold good. So, go back to those fundamentals like honesty, clarity and taking the time out to do your research.

• Put your money in market segments having a rapid growth: Find the market segments that are growing quickly. Understand them and decide if you can win business at a fast pace in those markets. If the answer is in affirmative, go for it.

• Seek more customers: You can work with your competitor during such a recession. Get them the customers that they want but you don’t and let them return the same favor. You can earn new customers and eventually more money by means of such co-marketing.

• Expand your business: Rather than acting in a conservative manner and shrinking your business volume, go for an expansion plan. However, don’t overspend. Instead, offer an effective message to your prospects and spread that message all over the place. The fact that Internet marketing is a lot more economical than other media will help you execute your expansion plans effectively.

• Start blogging: If you are not yet into blogging, begin today. A big world of social media will open up to you once you start blogging. Marketing your products by means of blogging will just cost you time. If you get yourself registered for some of the most effective social networks like MySpace, Digg, Facebook etc and make friends, it will help you. Suppose you have 100 friends on one such social network, who in turn have 100 friends each. When you communicate some exciting news about your business at this social network, your immediate friends and their extended friend circle will give you 10,000 listeners, a majority of whom may convert into your clientele.

So, don’t panic even during these hard times of recession. Rather, use the aforesaid suggestions to make the most of your website marketing campaign.

Do you have any more ideas? Please comment!

Recommended Reading:

Marketing during Recession

7 Strategies for B2B Marketing during a Recession: The Definitive Guide

Should You Cut Your Marketing Budget During a Recession?