Essential Elements in Web Design for Increasing Traffic

It's important to keep web designs cutting edge to increase traffic. For eCommerce stores, the need becomes even more important. Business2Community describes the levels of innovation as increasing at a rate that might scare some businesses, but that, instead of being frightened, they should focus on the most essential elements. Here are some of the top ones you should consider including.

Mobile Website Compatibility

One of the most important elements that you must have in a website design is mobile website compatibility. Margin Media conducted a study and found that 48 percent of users will decide against using a business's service if they get to the mobile website and find it doesn't work well.

Blog

Blogs have been around since the early days of the Internet. According to "The History of Bloggin," the first blog post was published in 1997, and it soon became one of the most popular sources of web content. The Search Engine Journal states that blog posts still provide some of the best options when it comes to building up indexed web pages, as long as the content is valuable. You can get a blog started on a number of free services as well as most places where you can build a website for free.

Responsive Design

Responsive design is considered one of the must have components of an effective website, according to eMarketer. It basically means that your website will adjust to fit any screen. It's not all that is involved in making a website compatible with all mobile devices, but it's often an important part. The main benefit that it offers is the fact that the viewing experience will be the same across multiple platforms.

Fast Loading Times

A number of studies have been set up to see how long people will wait for a web page to load. Surprisingly, it doesn't seem to matter whether it's on a traditional computer or on a mobile device. eConsultancy's study found that 40 percent of people leave a website if the page takes more than three seconds in loading time. Mobile Joomla found that the number of pages that potential customers leave increase over 100 percent when it takes more than four seconds, and it goes up 150 percent if the page takes over eight seconds. Sometimes making sure that your web pages load faster will require that the design be streamlined. This is part of the reason that the modern web design has started leaning so heavily toward the minimalist influence.

Single Landing Pages for Each Product

Landing pages have not yet become dinosaurs in the Internet marketing world. While hard sell techniques still provide far lower results than other forms of advertising, certain elements of the classic hard sell campaign can still be beneficial. The landing page is one of these. According to the Marketing Sherpa, the secret is to make sure that each landing page focuses on a single goal. HubSpot's research discovered that many businesses wind up with 30+ landing pages, but that these businesses developed 7-12 times more leads than businesses with a single landing page for all their products, or even less than five such pages.