How Does Good Website Design Positively Impact Revenues?

What is Good Website Design vs. Bad Website Design?

From a business growth perspective, good website design is the result of the following seven elements:

1. Alignment with your business objectives
2. Technically robust
3. Aesthetically Appealing
4. Built with future growth in mind
5. Supports business development team needs
6. Integrates with other marketing initiatives
7. Performance is measurable

Website Design Companies Should Align with Your Business Objectives

Website designs will vary depending on your target audience and the company’s goals. It’s important to work with a website design company that aligns with your business objectives (and not just theirs!).

For example:

Government contractors seeking to establish credibility with Federal Government Procurement Officers need to include specific content that their visitors expect to find online, for example, a leadership page or a capabilities statement.

Whereas, a national commercial landscaping company that wants to illustrate the beauty of their work will have a heavy concentration of photographs and possibly video.

Clearly, these websites will look and operate quite differently.

Also, let’s not forget that business objectives extend beyond marketing. Websites can also impact employee recruitment and retention goals. If you are looking for top talent, they are checking you out online long before they apply for a position with your company.

To learn more about employee recruitment and retention opportunities. Contact Us

Technically Robust Website Development

The technical requirements for websites are considerable, but they can be defined in terms of visitor usability. Google has been a significant driver of improved website usability. In 2020 Google introduced the concept of Core Web Vitals as an additional criterion for ranking websites in Search Engine Results Page (SERPs).

Here’s what users expect from your website:

• Speed: The website must load quickly. More than a few seconds and users will click on a competitor’s website. You also have to consider both mobile and desktop users.
• Mobile-Friendly: With over 60% of all website interactions being on a phone or tablet users expect your website to be easy to navigate. This means clear navigation and buttons big enough to poke without “fat fingering” the wrong call to action.
• Security: If users enter their data into your website forms they have an expectation that you are keeping that data secure. The lack of SSL certification is a red flag for users (in part because browsers will highlight websites without the HTTPS designation with a warning. These warnings will drive visitors away because they fear any interaction with a website that could have a security issue.
• Safe Browsing: Visitors assume that a website will not download malware onto your computer.
• No Intrusive interstitials: This is Google’s terminology but the simple translation is “no nasty pop-ups that ruin the user experience”. But aren’t all Pop-ups intrusive I hear you say? The answer is “no”—pop-ups can improve the visitor experience by guiding them to helpful content in their buyers’ journey. But that takes some careful planning as part of a broader digital marketing program.

Clearly, there is a heavy technical component to website design and development that covers these basic user requirements.

But wait there’s more…

In 2020, Google added three more criteria that impact the technical aspects of website design.

1. Loading—Largest colorful Paint: This looks at the amount of time it takes for a webpage to load enough information to be useful to the visitor.
2. Interactivity—First Input Delay (FID): how long before a visitor can interact with that webpage.
3. Visual Stability—Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): meaning the website content does not move around as the page loads. Poor stability causes you to click in the wrong place and it’s very annoying!

On the other hand, technology companies may choose to use images and graphic design to illustrate, educate or complement highly technical messages.

There is no right answer other than the website design should align with your business objectives.

Aesthetically Pleasing and Custom Website Design

Aesthetics are somewhat subjective but you know good design when you see it—right?  Well, maybe.

Consider this:

• Websites that are hard to use will fail
• Websites that are aesthetically beautiful but are not user friendly may also fail.

It, therefore, depends on how you define success for your website.

Custom web design will also impact website design costs—so it is important to make sure that increased investment is adding value to your target audience.

Let’s narrow the focus to for-profit businesses. We can assume that one of the objectives is profitable sales growth. Under this scenario the website has a job to do, for example:

• Keep users engaged—provide the information they want quickly and succinctly. There may be some additional personality added into the mix—serious, amusing, entertaining—that’s part of the brand experience
• Educate—provide information to move people through the buyers’ journey. Or, give specific product/service information, so that you don’t have to explain it in person.
• Capture contact information—to be used in future marketing efforts such as email marketing campaigns

To illustrate the point, I would not describe Amazon’s website as beautiful, yet I think we can agree that it is outrageously successful. It does what is supposed to do extremely well, which is to get you to a product that you are likely to buy.

Apple has built on its simple white brand image to create a well-designed website. But it is a good design is because it also fulfills its primary purpose of guiding people through the buyer’s journey towards a purchasing decision.

Websites Built With Future Growth In Mind

Building a solid foundation for the future should be an inherent part of any new website design and development project. This is why Ocean 5 asks about business strategy and website objectives.

None of us can predict the future. But, with an understanding of the bigger picture, we can develop a website that has flexibility for growth built-in. That’s where growth-driven design comes in.

Ocean 5 website projects are based on the principles of growth-driven design (GDD), which impact website design in the following three ways:

1. Quicker time to value: GDD websites require less upfront time, energy, and resources from your company. GDD websites often launch in about half the time of a traditional website with substantially less upfront cost.
2. Drives better results from revenue: Traditional web design has a broken “set it and forget it” mentality. Growth driven design has a continuous “improvement over time” mentality—a better playbook for growth.
3. Creates happier clients: Clients are more satisfied with the GDD process compared with traditional web design. Who wouldn’t be—with more flexibility, a better timeline, reduced upfront costs, and data-driven refinements leading to quicker time to value?

Traditional Website Design vs Growth-Driven Design

When looking at the traditional website design approach adopted by most website development companies (including us years ago!) we can see why the process is broken.

Ultimately, growth-driven design drives optimal results by learning about your visitors through data and continually improving the performance of the site.

Learn More About Growth-Driven Design. Download the Free Guide

Websites That Support Business Development Team Needs

2020 and COVID was a pivotal point for companies that relied heavily on business development to build relationships, gather information, and compete for contracts. Government contractors are a prime example.

The question is how to engage buyers when you can’t meet with them in person?

The coronavirus pandemic did not change how marketing and sales can collaborate, but it did accelerate the use of online tools and techniques. And digital transformation became the latest buzzword.

Here are some ways Ocean 5 has helped companies with their business development and website alignment.

First, create sales presentations that can be used in an online sales pitch. Then take repetitive, non-proprietary aspects and place them on a webpage. Next, in preparation for a Zoom meeting, clients can be provided with related review materials beforehand which reduces the sales time and improves business development efficiencies.

With core sales materials online it is possible to scale dramatically. It’s no longer necessary to repeat the same stories and product specifications—these can be conveyed with absolute consistency to anyone with internet access. They are also available 24/7 and can be accessed by a potential customer in their own time.

Talk to us about ways to accelerate your sales growth. Contact Us

Websites and Digital Marketing Program Integration

Your website is the hub of any digital marketing program but the extent of integration and how it works is often not always fully appreciated.

In addition, integrating the website with more traditional marketing programs, such as trade shows and advertising, is sometimes overlooked entirely.

And let’s not forget about employee recruitment and retention. This is especially important for government contractors and technology companies who need to scale up rapidly when they land a contract.

Digital Marketing Programs

Digital Marketing typically includes a combination of

• Pay per click (PPC) search marketing
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Social media marketing
• Email marketing

Understanding how each of these works is a basic requirement for implementing them. Understanding how they work together is the magic that creates a successful, cost-effective, digital marketing program.

The table below illustrates some of the common intersections between digital marketing tools and your website:

The combinations of use cases for these tools is endless, some work well and some don’t. Some work well for specific products and services, and specific market segments and personas.

Ultimately that brings us back to aligning the website design and development with your business goals.

Learn more about aligning your website with your business goals. Contact us

Website Performance

The performance of your website is measurable. The challenge is cutting through the swathes of digital marketing data to get to the handful of things that really matter.

At Ocean 5, we are known for making the complex seem simple. That’s why we narrow our marketing reports to data that shows a progression towards a goal or identifies opportunities for improvement.

At a high level, businesses rely on leads, opportunities, deals, and contracts to generate revenue. The correlation between marketing activities and revenue is often referred to as “attribution”—as in attribution revenue to the marketing activities that generated it.

Attribution is a huge topic in its own right and beyond the scope of this article. However, the implementation of marketing automation tools and processes can dramatically improve attribution metrics.

To measure website performance we draw on multiple tools and aggregate the data into meaningful, actionable metrics. For example, website traffic, form fills, chats, and phone calls can all be measures of success.

Behind the scenes, we will use dozens of other metrics to modify the website to improve these contributions to the business.

• Traffic by source eg organic vs paid search
• Traffic paths through the website
• Speed
• Uptime
• Technical errors
• Security notifications

And many, many more to ensure that your website is online, delivering a great user experience, and remains aligned with your business development goals and business objectives.

Why Choose Ocean 5 for Website Design and Development

We combine the following 5 essential components for delivering an excellent website.

1. Technical capabilities
2. Aesthetic design capabilities
3. Growth-driven design
4. Our project management process
5. Alignment with sales and marketing activities
6. Ocean 5 core values

Technical and Aesthetic Design Capabilities

Our website and digital marketing teams are experts in their respective fields. Our website designs are based on an alignment with your company and the people you are trying to reach.

Project Management Process

We use a modified version of Agile project management to keep projects on schedule.

Alignment with Sales and Marketing Activities

Our onboarding process will define the role of the website in your sales and marketing pipeline and will be designed accordingly.

Ocean 5 Core Values

We follow our core values throughout all of our engagements which are:

• We add value
• We do what we say we will do
• We do the right thing

About Ocean 5

Ocean 5 is a Growth Agency

• We look across the entire sales and marketing pipeline and make sure it is aligned with your overall business goals.
• We are subject matter experts in developing effective strategies and implementing digital marketing programs that deliver a positive ROI.
• We make the complex seem simple—we consolidate information and data into an executive summary that can be used to make informed business decisions.
• We are experts in marketing for government contractors, technology companies, and B2B enterprises.

Ocean 5 Builds Outstanding Websites for Business

Ocean 5 creates websites that are fully custom, technically advanced, responsive (mobile-friendly), professionally designed, and provide an outstanding user experience. We use Growth Driven Design to build a digital platform for accelerated lead generation.

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