The Importance of A Modern Website Design for Local Businesses
There is no question that entrepreneurs, in general, know how important it is to have a website for their business.
However, some small business owners put a website up but don’t pay much attention to its web design.
It’s not unheard of for websites for local businesses to look outdated not only in form but also in function.
Local businesses need their websites to have elements of modern web design to maximize results, and they need the help of web design specialists to do just that.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the reasons local businesses should go for modern web design for their websites.
People Abandon Badly-Designed Websites
A badly-designed website could mean that its aesthetics are not up to par, and its usability is rather poor.
With 90% of people leaving a website due to poor web design, local business owners need to do what they can to improve their web design in terms of looks and the user experience they provide to all visitors.
It Promotes Trust and Brand Recognition
Your website is the face of your business on the Internet. When it looks amazing and works quite well, your website will make a good impression, which will lead to improved trust and brand recognition among users.
If you have outdated design elements in your website, such as table-based layouts, hit counters, and the overuse of stock photography, and you don’t do anything about them, you might want to rethink that.
People who stumble onto your site will use all of their impressions of your website in evaluating your company’s trustworthiness, and things won’t be looking good in that regard if your site looks and feels outdated.
You will be doing your local business a favor if your web design looks modern and professional enough to encourage trust among your visitors.
Improves Leads And Conversions
If you’re implementing modern website design, you are, in effect, applying tactics that focus on generating more leads and conversions.
Websites with modern web design make good use of graphics and visual cues to grab the attention of users and get them to make an emotional connection with the content.
Making navigation simpler is also a hallmark of modern website design. With navigation becoming so much easier for visitors, they will be more likely to fill out a form, subscribe to a newsletter, or avail of your products or services.
Using whitespace helps with conversions as well, as all the breathing room it provides your pages helps direct the attention of visitors to your call-to-action (CTA) button, special offers, and other clickable elements.
Mobile-Friendliness Is A Must
No website can ever truly claim to have a modern web design if it isn’t mobile-friendly.
Strangely enough, many websites still don’t render well on smartphones and tablets, despite the fact that there are more than five billion unique mobile users in the world today.
In any case, mobile-friendliness is an advantage for a local business with a website, as 61% of mobile users are more likely to contact them if their site displays nicely on mobile devices.
The fact that Google has scheduled its rollout of mobile-first indexing for all websites for March 2021 means it’s high time to switch to a mobile-friendly design if you want to improve your pages’ rankings in search results.
These are just some of the reasons why it’s imperative for local business websites to incorporate elements of modern web design.
If you run a local business, you can partner with a reliable web design agency to update your website design and usher your website into the modern era.
About the Author
Gabby Klesser is the Outreach Manager for LA Website Design, a digital marketing agency that has assembled a team of expert web designers and digital marketing strategists. She often writes about web design, UX, social media, technology, marketing, and starting a non-profit.
