In 2024, having an effective website is more important than ever for small businesses and startups. With increasing competition online, you need a site that not only looks professional, but also converts visitors into leads and sales. However, creating an effective website can feel overwhelming, especially with the pace of change in web design and technology.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk through key strategies and examples to help you build a website in 2024 that drives real business results.
A beautiful, modern design is important, but should always come second to user experience. Keep the customer journey in mind at every step. Your website should guide visitors seamlessly towards a conversion, whether that’s a purchase, contact form submission, or content download.
Some key UX tips:
For example, an ecommerce site should make it easy to add products to your cart and check out. A services business should highlight engaging their services and make contacting simple. Every page should move users towards your ultimate business goals.
We recently redesigned the website for a local yoga studio. Their old site looked dated and made it hard for visitors to sign up for classes or learn about pricing options. Our redesign focused completely on user experience:
In the first month after re-launching, leads increased by 35% and new student signups jumped 25%. Focusing on user experience and conversions made a huge impact.
If you operate locally, optimizing your website for local SEO should be a top priority. Ranking high in local search results brings in customers who are ready to buy from businesses near them.
Key local SEO tips:
Ideally, choose a web platform like WordPress that makes local SEO easy. For example, a lot of templates include schema markup automatically. There are also great SEO plugins to help optimize technical site details.
We helped a local law office redesign their outdated website to drive more local traffic. Here’s what we focused on:
This SEO and UX focused redesign helped them rank for critical local terms. Their website traffic has doubled, and they get 5-10 new client consultations every month directly from their site.
With the wide variety of web building platforms available today, it can be tough to determine the best option for your business. Here are a few of the most popular choices:
WordPress powers over 40% of all websites, and for good reason. It’s easy to use, completely customizable, with thousands of templates and plugins available. However, it does require more technical expertise than some platforms.
Squarespace makes it simple to create a beautiful, professional website without any coding required. It has sophisticated designer templates and built-in ecommerce. The main downside is lack of flexibility compared to WordPress.
Wix is another drag and drop website builder that’s very user-friendly. It has AI design features and supports ecommerce. Be aware that transitioning away from Wix can be difficult in the future.
Webflow lets you design fully custom sites without coding by using a visual editor. It creates modern sites and animations, but does have a learning curve. Webflow also makes SEO easy.
The right option depends on your business needs, budget, and existing technical expertise. Make sure to consider long term flexibility in case you want to expand or redesign your site down the road.
Website speed has become a critical factor in conversions, SEO, and user experience. 53% of mobile site visitors will leave a page that takes over 3 seconds to load.
Some tips to improve speed:
Test your site speed regularly using Google PageSpeed Insights or WebPagetest. Optimize your pages to load in under 2 seconds on mobile devices whenever possible.
We optimized an ecommerce fashion website that was having speed issues. Here were the steps taken:
These optimizations improved mobile speed scores from 28 to 87. Desktop speed increased from 73 to 91. Traffic from organic search increased 22% in the following months as a result.
In 2024, the majority of web traffic comes from mobile devices. Having a responsive mobile-friendly design is essential.
Some tips for mobile-first design:
The optimal approach is to design the mobile experience first. Start with a mobile wireframe, then expand the layout for desktop sizes. Mobile-first design helps avoid clutter and ensure critical elements are accessible.
A law firm came to us with a website that was poorly optimized for mobile. We rebuilt the site mobile-first:
The improved mobile experience increased contacts and consultations booked directly from smartphones and tablets by 67%.
Website design and functionality trends change rapidly each year. Staying current with the latest features and best practices is key.
Some popular design trends this year include:
From a functionality perspective, features like AMP and PWA have become essential. Structured data markup is also a must for SEO.
Stay on top of the latest trends each year and update your site accordingly. While radical redesigns aren’t necessary every year, aim to refresh portions of your site regularly. Keeping a modern, polished aesthetic and UX boosts conversions and readership.
We gave an outdated insurance website a modern redesign with current functionality. Our updates included:
The redesign made the site feel fresh, improved mobile experience, and increased quote requests by 29% month over month.
Creating an effective website in 2024 requires focusing on user experience, conversions, and modern design trends. Follow the strategies outlined in this guide to help ensure your website drives real business results and keeps up with the pace of change in the industry.
The key things to remember are:
With the right strategic approach, you can have an effective website that grows your business in 2024 and beyond.
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