Usability on multiple devices
Those of you of a certain age will remember those old science fiction TV programmes and movies we watched years ago in which people made video calls via devices they held in their hand that were no bigger than a bar of chocolate. At the time it seemed like technology from hundreds of years in the future but jump forward just 30 or 40 years to today, and video calling seems like second nature.
That is especially true with many people having faced lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that has led to a much greater reliance on mobile devices, even for people who would previously not have used them much. For any business which wants to make the most of the greater use of handheld mobile devices, its website needs to be mobile responsive, and if it is not, that business is losing hundreds of potential customers.
It is actually the case that any professional web design agency is not just building one website for a client they are building 3 or 4 versions of it. The others are those versions of the website that are suitable for other devices such as tablets and mobile phones, and if your business wants to target those who use their mobile devices more than their PC or laptop at home, you need these mobile responsive versions in place.
Improved SEO / Google ranking
This next benefit definitely requires some attention because if you are able to combine all the other benefits of having a professionally designed website with this one then there can be no reason why your business in Sydney cannot beat your competition to the point of dominating your local market.
First, it is important to know that when is calculating where it will rank something for a particular search term, Google is ranking individual pages, rather than an entire website. This means that with every page being professionally designed by Slinky Web Design Sydney gives you the opportunity to have every single page of your website ranked highly in Google. Imagine the massive uplift in traffic you will receive when that happens.
However, before we get ahead of ourselves, we need to get those pages ranked first, which is where SEO comes in. Part of SEO takes place on your website, and there are some ranking factors that are more applicable to the visual design of your website than they are to some of the elements that exist in the background and within the coding of your website.
Those visual elements, including the content on your website, will influence 2 important ranking factors that Google measures. They are ‘bounce rate’, and ‘dwell time’ both of which are heavily influenced by how well your website has been designed.
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors to a website that leaves without visiting any other pages. The thinking at Google is that a well-designed website is more likely to attract and encourage visitors to click through to other pages than one that is poorly designed. It follows that the higher the bounce rate, the less Google believes a website is giving visitors a great experience, and thus the ranking of that site is reduced.
Dwell time is a similar assessment of a user’s experience where Google measures how long someone remains on a website having clicked through from Google’s search results. It follows logic that if someone remains on a website for a long period of time, something within that site is keeping them there, and accordingly, Google will increase that website’s ranking.
Enhanced security
It is a sad fact of both the online and the offline world that there dishonest people who we could label as crooks. Online these people are generally given the tag ‘hacker’ and they operate in a number of ways to try to make money from their nefarious online activities.
While some schemes involve attacking the websites of large corporations, hackers are just as likely to target local businesses, and given that Sydney is a large city, there are plenty for them to go after. In truth, you could be located anywhere in the world, and the hacker might see you as an opportunity for attack, and if your website does not have the necessary security in place, then you are not just a target, but an easy target.
With a website designed and built by a professional web design agency such as Slinky Web Design Sydney, then at least you know your website will be as safe as it is possible to be.