Over the past years, we have learned that an entertaining and helpful website that keeps users engaged on a website page, are usually better at selling more products and services as well as ranking higher in the search engines.
One of the most important features all websites need to do well in Google search as well as with your customers online, is making sure that your website is mobile friendly.
You can test to see if your website is mobile responsive online for free with this website tool MobileTest.me.
Page load times are an important part of good SEO and/or search engine optimization to help your business website rank high in Google search.
Best Web Design Examples
Mobile usability and page load times are important not only for SEO, but for customer conversion rates. Most of your website visitors are most certainly using a mobile phone to view your company website. They are often in a hurry and need to find the information quickly. If your website takes too long to load, they will simply hit the browser back button.
Listed below are great examples of custom web designs that entertain, provide value and offer interesting content to their website users without making the site too large to load quickly or not load at all on a mobile phone.
View more custom web designs in Sandy Rowley’s design portfolio here.
Sandy Rowley is a Webby Award Winning web designer, located in Reno Nv USA.
Web designs created in 2018 are trending more towards the flat design elements seen on popular websites like Air Bnb and others are moving the design trends into some interesting and fun areas.
Web designs should load fast, and be mobile responsive, but they should also achieve the goal of the following:
- Sign up newsletter subscribers
- Buy a product or service
- Bookmark
- Share on social media networking websites.
- Click phone number to call
Website visitors need to perform an action on your website in order for it to count as a conversion. If a website user visits a page on your website, then leaves, Google counts this like a bounce or if a website visitor hit the back button while viewing your website.
If your website has a high bounce rate, your website will not be able to hold your rankings in Google search for long.
source: https://conversionxl.com/guides/bounce-rate/benchmarks/
According to Google, “a bounce is a single-page session.” Put more concretely, a bounce occurs whenever a user enters your page and does not further interact with the elements on said page or any other pages on your site. A bounce might be triggered by any number of events:
- Returning to search results
- Closing the browser
- Entering a new URL in the address bar
- Following an outbound link
- Staying inactive and timing out the session
- Reading the entirety of a page but not triggering any events, and then leaving
It makes sense that most of the devices with the highest bounce rates are on mobile phones.
Search Engine Journal estimates that most websites are not in compliance with mobile first.
Why these Metrics Matter
According to Google:
…it was found that sites loading within 5 seconds had 70% longer sessions, 35% lower bounce rates, and 25% higher ad viewability than sites taking nearly four times longer at 19 seconds.
Additionally, the speed of a site affects earnings and sales. Here’s what Google’s data has shown:
“Slow sites have a negative impact on revenue, and the opposite is also true.
For Mobify, Every 100ms decrease in homepage load speed worked out to a 1.11% increase in session-based conversion, yielding an average annual revenue increase of nearly $380,000. Additionally, a 100ms decrease in checkout page load speed amounted to a 1.55% increase in session-based conversion, which in turn yielded an average annual revenue increase of nearly $530,000.”
Takeaway: Poor Performing Competition Can be Your Strength
Most websites owners are unaware that their websites are doing poorly in mobile and Google search. I always recommend doing a full technical SEO audit each year to make sure your web design is in compliance with the many changes and updates to the Google algorithms.
Most SEO audits cost less than a few thousand dollars, but their findings usually generate many thousands more in SEO rankings, customer acquisition and out ranking of competitor websites.
Who can do a technical SEO audit for a website design? Usually it is a person that has web design as well as web development skills and experience.
What style of web designs would your customers love to see?
Flat, modern, video, simple, highly creative or corporate in nature?
All of my custom web designs begin with that very question. What would my clients, clients want to see in their website?
Custom Web Design is Crucial To A Small Business Success
