Spending time on the website navigation menu design doesn’t often come up first, but maybe it should.
What often comes to mind tends to be the visual element of design. Things like colors, typography and imagery.
Run a Google search for “website design inspiration” or something similar, colors, imagery, and layout are things others will recommended to you from a wide number of sources.
These elements of design are obviously important. And they go a long way toward ensuring your website makes an impression on the people that matter. But web design, when it’s done right, actually goes quite a bit further than that.
Designing your website’s navigation menu with the right touch may be the unsung hero of website design. Often overlooked, they’re one of the most critical features of almost every kind of website. As they literally determine whether or not users can find the pages you’ve worked hard to put online.
They’re unique for another reason as well. Navigation menus are one of the few elements of a website that depend on any given user being able to understand how to control them perfectly with minimal (if any) instruction.
If you’re looking through a website and have trouble adjusting the settings on a slideshow or photo carousel, for example, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll continue to use the website anyway. But if your navigation menus are too complicated or too obscure, visitors will click away in a second. Messing this up makes your site functionally useless.
And beyond the user interactivity side of things, site navigation can also play a surprisingly major role in the way you rank on websites like Google, Yelp, and mapping services. The way you organize your pages — and how well you communicate that organizations to the software that determines search rankings — is critical.
So what sets excellent website navigation menu design apart from the rest? And how can someone building a site ensure an amazing visitor experience?
The good news is that learning the do’s and don’ts of excellent navigation design doesn’t require a lot of complex technical knowledge or design skill. It just takes a firm understanding of current design standards and how they apply to various types of websites.
By following these steps, you’ll be well on your way to designing a website navigation menu that features gorgeous, simple-to-understand navigation that anyone can use effectively.
1. Organize Your Site’s Content
This one might seem a little counter-intuitive, but it makes a big difference down the line.
Before you decide on how people will navigate your completed site, start by thinking about the actual content they’ll be navigating to first.
Think about all of the things your website needs to accomplish. Anything from showcasing images of your work to allowing people to make purchases directly. And then bundle those features and elements into individual pages in a manner that’s easy-to-understand.
Clarity is the most important thing here. Too many or too few webpages can confuse visitors and drive them away. You should feel like anyone could find roughly anything they’re looking for with little possible confusion.
You could use a platform like Trello or Asana to manage a project like this. But personally, I prefer to write out each page and roughly what content it features on post-it notes and physically move them around.
Approaching your web design project this way will ensure that you’ve already thought deeply about various configurations and ways of conveying information to users before a single line of code is written. It’s far easier to move webpage sections around, or remove them completely, at this stage of development.
While you’re doing this, one critical thing to keep in mind is that you should have a top-level page for every major thing your company sells or your website should accomplish if possible.
This can have a game-changing effect on your ranking in many kinds of searches.
To use Robben Media as an example, we’re making it a priority to have separate pages for our web design, SEO, and marketing products. This way, Google searches for “Cincinnati website design” or “local SEO Cincinnati” point to our website as efficiently as possible.
2. Pick a Navigation Style That Fits
Once you’ve put together a sensible map for your site, it’s time to start thinking about how the navigation menu will look.
There are many styles of navigation menu, and each brings their own unique features and benefits. Any one of these menu styles might be a great choice for your website, so long as you ensure that you only use one.
Using more than one menu style across your site is a sure fire way to confuse visitors. Your navigation menu should be as consistent as possible across pages.
Option One: Left-Aligned Top Navigation
When you think of “website navigation”, this menu style is probably the first one that comes to mind.
It’s basically the “default” way to design a menu. Logo on the left and a handful of options or buttons on the right, with the logo redirecting to the homepage.
You might also be familiar with minor variations to this style. The menu items on the right might reveal a drop-down menu of more options when a user hovers over them.
This is a simple, versatile menu layout that can work well for a broad number of websites.
Option Two: Center-Aligned Top Navigation
This one is pretty similar to left-aligned top navigation, but with a key difference: now, the logo is in the middle with a symmetrical selection of options on either side.
This method of navigation is a little more eye-catching and places your logo right in the center, but also has its own unique caveats. You’ll need an even number of top-level navigation options and CTA buttons don’t quite look right in this context.
Ultimately, if you have simpler goals for your navigational system and want to inject a little bit of style, this is a compelling choice.
Option Three: The Hamburger Menu
The “hamburger menu” is the name for that three-lined icon in the top left corner of websites and apps. This is a menu navigation option that is really interesting because it enables your navigation to work exactly the same on both desktop and mobile layouts.
That’s a big deal, but it also comes with some big caveats. Typically, hamburger menus take up the entire right side of a display when fully expanded.
If consistency across multiple form factors or jumping on board the latest web design trends is high on your list of priorities, this is a great option.
3. Nail the Details
No matter menu option you select, your ultimate priority should be to keep things easy to understand and access. After all, simple websites convert best.
There are small embellishments to these navigational systems that you might find useful as well. The previously-mentioned drop-down menus are one example. Another is the small bar on top of the navigation menu with links to social media.
Both of these can be fine additions, so long as they add meaningful functionality.
Some do-it-yourself website authoring tools like Wix might encourage you to add in build-in or build-out animations. Though I’d encourage you to exercise caution unless they’re extremely unobtrusive. Nobody is happy it took an extra three seconds to load a page because of an unnecessary, pretty animation.
I’ve mentioned this quote before, but it applies just as well here for designers. Matias Duarte of Google said, “prove that you need more complexity before you add it”. If you apply this principle to your design process, I’m confident your result will be perfectly useful.
Well, at least, I’m confident your result will be useful on desktop. How should web designers factor mobile design into their navigation strategy?
With the exception of a sitewide hamburger menu, you’re probably going to have to implement a user interface for your navigation menu on Mobile that’s at least slightly different. Putting your navigation behind a hamburger or a drop-down are common choices.
You might feel tempted to mirror your desktop experience to mobile as exactly as possible, but I’d encourage caution. Instead, focus on implementing a navigation option that will instantly make sense to mobile users. This way, even if your implementation differs slightly, you’ll have achieved a consistency of experience.
Website Navigation Design Summary
And that’s really what designing flawless navigation menus is all about. Making it easy for visitors to find information on your website as fast as possible.
Follow these steps to properly design your website navigation menu. Then your visitors will find your site fast to load and easy to use.
And this will contribute to more sales generated from your site, without a doubt.
Would a simple website design convert better compared to a crazy, complicated website with features appearing left and right?
Did you know that companies that take on a structured approach towards conversion optimization are twice as likely to see customers convert?
What do you think?
After building and testing customer’s sites for years, it’s obvious that clean, easy-to-follow websites sell more. This is how it goes every time, all the time.
Here’s the reasoning.
Why Simple Websites Convert More Customers
Keep it prototypical
In a 2012 study by Google, researchers found that “visually complex” websites are consistently rated as less attractive websites than ones with a more basic design.
Flashiness is not the best way to portray your brand. The simpler the better.
But not too simple to the point where your site looks cheap or unprofessional. The website has to look good. It has to look credible in its simplicity.
Concepts such as cognitive fluency and the visual information processing theory can play a crucial role when it comes to simplifying our web design. That’s fancy terms for this point: Simple designs convert more customers, so why waste time developing a complex website that will ultimately decrease sales?
Prototypicality is another important idea to keep in mind when designing your website. The definition of prototypical is “denoting the first, original, or typical form of something.” Prototypicality is the basic mental image your brain creates to categorize everything you interact with.
If I said car what is the first image that pops into your head? Sedan? What if I said dog? Would you imagine a golden retriever?
This is because of prototypicality. Your brain has created a template for how things should look or feel.
Online, prototypicality breaks down into smaller categories. You have different, but specific mental images for social networks, ecommerce marketing sites, and blogs. What’s interesting is if any of those particular websites are missing something from your mental image, then you will reject the site on conscious and subconscious levels.
If I said “Online clothing store for trendy 20 somethings” you might envision something like this:
Urban Outfitters has done a great job with attracting younger customers. Here they have a pretty basic web design while also displaying seasonal offers like Fall prints on tops and pants for girls and guys.
The Urban Outfitters site follows the basic mental image of an online clothing store.
There are the menu options at the top of the page. And the first thing a possible customer sees is the seasonal offers with attractive models wearing the clothing.
This should be what you display on your homepage if you are a fashion company designing your website.
When designing your website, consider the basic expectations of an ecommerce site and your audience’s expectations. And follow them. As a PPC agency, we make our customers way more money when their site is simple and optimized to convert.
Cognitive Fluency
The basic idea behind cognitive fluency is that the brain prefers to think about things that are easy to comprehend.
People instinctively prefer visiting sites where they know where everything is and know what actions to take.
The more you are exposed to something the more you are familiar with it, right? If people are familiar with something then they will usually prefer certain types of sites over others.
It is “familiar” for ecommerce sites to feature large pictures of models wearing the advertised clothing with an attention grabbing headline along with the company logo on the top left corner of the screen.
Urban Outfitters homepage has done just that.
They are also a great example of a site that has fit certain characteristics that are familiar to the majority of the population.
If your visitors are familiar with certain characteristics being the standard for a particular category of site, then it would be smart to match that standard.
It is important to know what what design choices are considered common (prototypical) for a site in category. However, it is more important to do the research and find evidence that supports those web design choices.
A lot of web designers make bad choices because they did not take the time to research the type of design that would be best for their particular category.
For example, many ecommerce sites use automatic image sliders to display products, but study after study has shown that automatic image sliders tank conversions.
Sometimes so bad as costing brand’s double digit percentage in revenue—yikes, that’s a nightmarish mistake.
Automatic image sliders will lead to deviation but we will talk about that soon. Right now it is important to comprehend cognitive fluency and how it affects customers reaction to your site.
With a high level of fluency, a site will feel familiar enough that visitors don’t need to spend time navigating and comprehending the page.
When focusing on website design, you need to think about how a person would react to your site and if they would navigate easily through it or not.
You want possible customers to spend less time using mental effort and more time focusing on purchasing your product!
When your site’s experience is not fluent you will realize this immediately. Just have someone unrelated to your company test the site out and see what they think.
If they liked it because of the fluency and its prototypicality then it looks like you’re off to a great start.
If they did not like it and they had trouble navigating your site then you may have to reconsider some aspects of the site. We always recommend a simple website navigation menu design.
Do the research, find your design layout that fits your category, and see immediate results.
Visually impressive is not impressive at all
In a joint study done by Harvard, University of Maryland, and University of Colorado, researchers found that visually complex websites had lower visual appeal.
This is because simple is scientifically easier to process. The more color and light that is on the page then the more the eye has to work.
That is why when designing your website it is important to remember every element that goes into the design such as font, logo, and color selection. The overall aesthetic has to be visually simple yet appealing.
Let’s look at MailChimp’s logo redesign as a great example of how a company found a much more pleasing aesthetic for their brand identity with just a few simple changes.
When MailChimp redesigned their logo they had to reconsider the font and color scheme. They tightened up the font and even made the line straighter underneath the writing. The background color also has a much more pleasing aesthetic than the original gray background.
MailChimp also simplified their entire website’s design. This was all apart of a larger growth strategy but after the new logo was debuted last year they added over a million new users.
Look at case studies of design changes from other sites and see how their improvement affected the business growth.
Remember to consider every aspect of your site’s design, especially the overall aesthetic that your design has.
Deviation causes disengagement
When you deviate from a person’s expectations, like if the price was higher than expected, the color scheme was different, the site did not load fast enough, or the photos were not of great quality, then your possible customers will not be interested in the site and therefore will not purchase your product.
These are all things that the visitor considers when looking at your site. If any of those things are not what they expected of your site, then they will disengage from your company.
This is why it is vital to understand how the customer would think. The blogs they read, the sites they shop on, their search browser, their age, gender, and even location will all impact their level of familiarity.
Research your audience and find out what sites they visit the most.
Clearly state the benefits
The websites that are simple to navigate will usually have their unique value proposition stated clearly on the homepage.
Also known as a unique selling proposition (USP), your UVP is a clear statement that describes the benefit of your offer, how you solve your customer’s needs, and what distinguishes you from the competition.
This should be stated on your website’s homepage and should be included in every marketing campaign.
A great example of a company website that does this is Uber.
On their website they have two sign up widgets that allow people to either be a rider or a driver. Under the sign up to be a driver widget, they allow people to fill out their basic information right there on the homepage.
Below their sign up widget they include the three unique value propositions shown above.
These propositions explain why they are better than their rival companies, solve their customers needs, and describe the benefit of their offer. They even give an option to read further as to why you should ride with Uber.
Their homepage is straight to the point and wastes no time for the visitor.
Uber also has their logo on the top left corner. They offer other drop down menus for being a rider or a driver. Their color scheme is simple and not too distracting for the visitor.
Further down their homepage they give an explanation on how they are committed to safety for riders and drivers.
If you have watched TV lately then you might have seen Uber’s new commercial with their new CEO. This is a part of their new ad campaign with their promise to be committed to safety.
If you run a new ad campaign for your company make sure you include it on your website so customers will be more familiar with the declaration.
Put it to action
Remember to research your audience.
Find the working components of your site and the ones that don’t work.
Obey the rules of cognitive fluency when you lay out your design.
Put things where your customers would be accustomed to finding them.
Rely on your own colors, logo and font to communicate your message clearly and subtly.
Do not add images to the site unless it is completely necessary.
Keep it as simple as possible. One large image is better than a bunch of little ones.
Utilize as much white space as possible.
Make sure you website fits the public expectation of a site in your particular category. This includes pricing, aesthetic, and especially the speed of your site.
Remember that “prototypical” does not mean every aspect of your site should fit the mold.
You have to be unique in some way. Distinguish yourself from the competition.
Conclusion
Simple websites are easier for the end consumer to navigate. Cleaner websites help the customer understand the product/service better. And that’s why they’re more likely to purchase.
The clean design is leading your user down a mental hallway where they’re encouraged to buy, and face no distractions in their way.
So when designing your company’s website or hiring it out to a web design company like Robben Media, it is essential to build a clean, visually pleasing website to convert more customers and grow your business.
Try testing out these suggestions today to see what works best to improve your company’s monthly profits. I guarantee you will see results in no time.
And don’t be surprised if you double your company’s profits in 6 months.
If you’re wondering how to make your website load insanely fast for better SEO, look no further. Quick loading times aren’t just about user experience—they’re a crucial SEO battleground. This article delivers straightforward, actionable strategies to rev up your site speed and climb the SEO ranks. Get ready to boost your page speed without the fluff.
Key Takeaways
Website speed directly influences SEO, user experience, and conversion rates, with faster load times leading to improved online success and user satisfaction.
Optimizing images, streamlining CSS and JavaScript files, and implementing caching solutions are essential strategies to accelerate the loading speed of WordPress sites, while utilizing a CDN can further reduce latency and improve site speed.
Continuous website monitoring and the adoption of efficient hosting solutions, including managed WordPress and dedicated hosting, play crucial roles in maintaining and enhancing website performance.
Unlocking the Secrets to Lightning-Fast Page Speed
In this digital age, your website’s speed can significantly impact your online success. From SEO rankings to user experience and conversion rates, many aspects of your digital presence hinge on how quickly your pages load.
However, one may wonder, how quick should a website be? Well, it’s faster than you might think. An additional second of loading time can lead to a 12% decline in conversions. In essence, the faster your pages load, the better your chances of maintaining user satisfaction and converting visitors into customers.
The Connection Between Load Time and SEO Rankings
Speed is a critical factor influencing search engine rankings. Google, the world’s leading search engine, has been prioritizing faster-loading websites in search rankings since 2010 for desktop and since 2018 for mobile. This move was further solidified with Google’s introduction of Core Web Vitals, key metrics that score user experience related to speed, interactivity, and visual stability.
It’s evident that if a website takes more than three seconds to load, the likelihood of user bounce rate increases threefold. However, it’s crucial to understand that while page speed is important, Google still values the relevance of content as the most crucial ranking factor, meaning that a slower yet more relevant page could outrank a faster but less pertinent one.
User Experience and Conversion Rates
Apart from SEO, the speed of a website significantly affects user experience and conversion rates. The quicker a website loads, the more likely a visitor is to stay, explore, and eventually convert into a customer. Statistics show that a load time between 0-4 seconds is optimal for achieving the highest conversion rates. This is especially crucial for businesses with a strong online presence. For instance, a B2B site that loads in 1 second can have up to three times the conversion rate of a site that loads in 5 seconds.
For e-commerce sites, this effect is even more pronounced, with conversion rates being 2.5 times higher for a 1-second load time compared to a 5-second one.
Essential Strategies to Accelerate Your WordPress Site
Understanding the importance of website speed, the next query is: how can we enhance the loading speed of our WordPress sites? We will dive into three key strategies: optimizing images, streamlining CSS and JavaScript files, and implementing caching solutions.
Optimizing Images for Web Delivery
Images, which enhance visual appeal and facilitate user engagement, are a crucial component of any website. However, heavy image files can significantly slow down your website. Hence, image optimization becomes crucial for web delivery. This involves reducing the file size without compromising image quality using various compression techniques.
Various tools and plugins, like:
Adobe Photoshop
GIMP
TinyPNG
JPEGmini
ImageOptim
Optimole
EWWW Image Optimizer
Smush
allow users to optimize images before uploading them to WordPress, making the process more efficient.
Streamlining CSS and JavaScript Files
The appearance and functionality of your website are largely determined by CSS and JavaScript files. However, excessive or poorly optimized CSS and JavaScript files can significantly slow down your website. Streamlining these files through minification, which involves removing unnecessary characters like whitespace, new lines, and comments, can enhance page loading speed.
Tools like WP Rocket, Autoptimize, and SiteGround Optimizer are available for WordPress users to enable the minification process within their website environments.
Implementing Caching Solutions
Implementing caching solutions is another effective approach to accelerate your WordPress site. Caching involves storing copies of files in a cache, or temporary storage location, so that data requests can be served faster. There are several types of caching, each serving a specific purpose.
WordPress caching solutions can be implemented using plugins such as W3 Total Cache, WP Fastest Cache, and LightSpeed Cache, which allow easy configuration and fine-tuning of different cache types to reduce server load.
Leveraging a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Utilizing a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is another potent way to boost your website speed. A CDN is a network of servers located at various points around the world, each storing a copy of your website’s static files. When a user visits your website, the CDN will serve them the files from the server closest to their location, reducing the time it takes for the data to travel and hence speeding up your website.
The Role of CDNs in Reducing Latency
CDNs play a crucial role in reducing latency, which is the delay before a transfer of data begins following an instruction for its transfer. By storing static content on multiple servers located in various geographical locations close to users, CDNs enhance the loading speed of web resources by reducing the round-trip time (RTT). CDNs employ techniques like session reuse, TCP pre-pooling, and network peering to optimize the connection and cut down latency, even when users are far from the origin server.
Selecting the Right CDN for Your Needs
Consideration of factors like connection optimization, traffic handling capacity, and geographic distribution of data centers is essential while choosing a CDN. These factors will impact the CDN’s effectiveness in reducing latency and improving site speed for users around the world.
Balancing the need for high performance with a comprehensive global reach can help provide fast load times for all users.
Integration and Management of CDN Services
Once you’ve chosen a CDN, you’ll need to integrate it with your WordPress site. This involves:
Updating your Domain Name Records (DNS) to point to the CDN service rather than your web hosting provider.
Using WordPress plugins to help manage CDN settings and ease the integration process.
After installation, managing performance enhancement settings like site accelerator, lazy loading, and optimizing CSS and JavaScript.
Advanced Performance Tuning Techniques
After mastering the fundamentals of speed optimization, you can explore more sophisticated performance tuning techniques. These include database optimization, code profiling, and adopting the latest web technologies. Each of these techniques can offer additional opportunities to boost your site’s performance and ensure a smooth, fast user experience.
Database Optimization for Faster Queries
Your website’s database is where all of its data is stored, and it’s what your website queries every time a user visits your site. Optimizing these queries can lead to faster data retrieval times and improved website performance. Here are some tips for optimizing your database queries:
Minimize the use of wildcard characters
Avoid unnecessary subqueries
Use the LIMIT or TOP clauses in SQL queries to prevent full table scans and accelerate query performance.
Code Profiling and Optimization
Code profiling and optimization are critical for enhancing the efficiency of code execution. Code profiling helps in identifying resource bottlenecks in code execution that can affect CPU and memory usage. Tools for code profiling are available for various programming languages and offer automatic instrumentation for languages like Java, .NET, and Node.js.
Adopting Latest Web Technologies
Adopting the latest web technologies can provide a significant boost to your site’s performance. For instance, Cloudflare’s Early Hints web standard can improve page load times by up to 30% with minimal setup required. One way to achieve this is to enable browser caching, which can further optimize your site’s loading speed. Additionally, implementing a free SSL certificate can enhance your site’s security and user trust.
WebAssembly, a low-level language, empowers developers to run complex applications at near-native speeds in web browsers, boosting site performance.
Harnessing the Power of Efficient Hosting Solutions
Adopting efficient hosting solutions can substantially improve your website’s speed. Managed WordPress hosting providers like Kinsta, WP Engine, and SiteGround offer high performance, security, and features such as automatic updates and daily backups, contributing to faster website speeds.
Managed WordPress Hosting: A Game-Changer
Managed WordPress hosting, a type of managed hosting platform provided by a managed WordPress hosting company can be a game-changer for your WordPress websites’ speed. Managed WordPress hosting plans offer expert support, automated updates of the WordPress core, plugins, and themes, and optimized configurations for WordPress, contributing to a fast and secure website environment. With all these benefits, it’s natural to wonder if managed WordPress hosting worth the investment and consider the WordPress hosting cost. Robben Media is a managed wordpress hosting provider and offers several options to help every business. WordPress hosting companies are essential for optimizing the performance and speed of a WordPress website.
Dedicated Hosting vs. Shared Hosting
When it comes to hosting, you have two main options: shared hosting and dedicated hosting. Shared hosting is more cost-effective and is an attractive option for small businesses and personal websites that usually have lower traffic levels. However, shared hosting can lead to performance issues as multiple websites share the same server resources.
Evaluating Server Response Time
Server Response Time (SRT), also known as Time to First Byte (TTFB), is a critical metric for website performance. It indicates the time it takes for a server to respond to a request. A TTFB under 100ms is considered excellent, while values between 200ms and 500ms are average, and above 500ms may negatively impact user experience.
Regular Monitoring and Testing for Peak Performance
Website speed optimization is not a one-off task. It’s a continuous process that involves regular monitoring and testing to ensure peak performance. Regular speed checks can reveal new issues that arise from updates in content, design, or functionality, enabling swift actions for optimization.
Utilizing Speed Test Tools
Tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and WebPageTest can offer critical insights into site performance. These tools offer an in-depth analysis of your website’s speed, providing detailed reports and actionable recommendations to improve its performance.
Consider the actionable recommendations accompanying the speed test scores
Prioritize implementation based on the potential impact on load times.
Establishing a Routine for Speed Checks
To maintain optimal performance, it’s crucial to establish a routine for conducting website speed tests. Consistent monitoring can reveal new issues that arise from updates in content, design, or functionality, enabling swift actions for optimization.
Lessons Learned from Industry Leaders
Industry leaders have also demonstrated the significant impact of website speed on their businesses. For instance, Amazon experienced a 1% loss in sales with every 100ms increase in latency, while Walmart reported up to a 1% rise in incremental revenue with each 100ms improvement in page speed.
These examples illustrate the direct correlation between speed and revenue, emphasizing the importance of speed optimization in a competitive digital landscape.
Summary
In conclusion, optimizing your WordPress site for speed can significantly boost your SEO rankings and user experience, leading to increased web traffic and conversions. From image optimization and CSS/JavaScript streamlining to leveraging CDNs and efficient hosting solutions, various strategies can help you achieve lightning-fast page speeds. Regular monitoring and testing, coupled with the use of advanced performance tuning techniques, can ensure peak performance and a seamless user experience. So, buckle up and get ready to supercharge your website speed!
Frequently Asked Questions
Does website loading speed affect SEO?
Yes, website loading speed does affect SEO. It is a direct ranking factor, as confirmed by Google’s algorithm speed update.
How do I optimize my website to load faster?
To optimize your website for faster loading, focus on tips like optimizing image size and format, reducing redirects, minimizing HTTP requests, and using G-Zip encoding. These actions can significantly improve your site’s loading time.
What is a good speed for website?
For optimal user experience, aim for a website that loads visual content within 2 seconds and becomes interactive within 5 seconds. Google suggests a load time of under half a second to improve performance and reduce abandonment rates.
What is the role of managed WordPress hosting in website speed?
Managed WordPress hosting can significantly improve website speed by offering expert support, automated updates, and optimized configurations for WordPress. These factors contribute to a faster and more secure website environment.
With so many options, choosing the best free WordPress plugins for your website can feel overwhelming. But no website is complete without these 15 plugins.
In pretty much every situation, WordPress is hands down the best platform for your website. One of the advantages of WordPress is the massive amount of free plugins you can install to improve your website.
If you coded your website by hand, it would take hours to implement features that WordPress plugins can get up and running on your site in seconds.
There are more than 50,000 plugins on the official WordPress plugins directory. And there are even more if you consider the vast amount of paid plugins you can purchase and install.
When you’re looking to add something to your site and start searching for plugins, chances are there are multiple similar options that appear to achieve the same goal.
How do you pick the best plugins? Experiment! The best way is to try all the options and see how you like them, looking for any “side effects” like breaking other features on your site.
That takes a lot of time—fortunately, we’ve done the work for you. As a website design company, we’ve built hundreds of WordPress websites for our customers and experimented with our fair share of plugins.
There are even plugins that add features to your site you don’t even realize you need!
We’ll review the best free WordPress plugins you should install to maximize what you’re getting out of your website. Where relevant, we’ll also suggest alternatives for more technical users and explain why the plugins we picked stand out from their competitors.
Keep reading until the end, as the post will wrap up with a few plugins you really should avoid.
The Best Free WordPress Plugins
There are numerous benefits to adding these plugins to your website. They’ll help your SEO, improve its performance, integrate your site with your other digital marketing efforts, and add other features your users have come to expect.
While we’ll only talk about free plugins in this post, there are quite a few powerful paid plugins as well that are worth exploring. However, these free plugins will get you in the game while you consider whether you might get an added benefit by investing in their paid alternatives.
You can install all these free plugins right from the WordPress admin dashboard by navigating to Plugins > Add New, searching the plugin name, clicking “install”, then “activate”.
For good reason, this is one of the most popular plugins of all time. The purpose of your website is to get the word out about your business. Yoast gets your SEO in shape to increase your traffic from search engines.
Brief refresher for the uninitiated: SEO, or search engine optimization, is a set of strategies you can use to help search engines understand what your site is about, and in turn, send more traffic your way.
Yoast covers all the essential SEO tactics. The plugin makes it really easy for you to update the title and description that appear on search engines (called “meta” title and description).
We recommend Yoast over the other immensely popular SEO plugin called All In One SEO. Both are great options with similar features, but Yoast is much more user-friendly.
Yoast is easier for a non-technical user to understand, while All In One SEO works well for SEO and website development pros. (Yoast is good for pros, too, with all the same essential features.)
2. Ninja Forms
Your website should make it easy for visitors to contact you. Ninja Forms is the best free option to make that happen.
Without coding anything, you can set up customized contact forms and embed them in the relevant spots on your site.
Ninja Forms, like many of the best free plugins, has a paid version. They’re not shy about trying to get you to upgrade either. But the plugin’s free features are enough for most situations.
Another great option is Contact Form 7, but it doesn’t have the simple user interface of Ninja Forms and it’s harder to customize the look and feel of your forms without basic HTML knowledge.
So if you’re a website pro, Contact Form 7 is a better option as there are more free options that cost money with Ninja Forms and other form plugins.
Setup Tip
Also install Flamingo so you can save form submissions. It’s useful to have everything in one place and to have a backup in case you have any issues with email delivery. Ninja Forms includes this feature in the main free plugin.
3. Akismet
Everyone hates spam. Since contact forms are a must-have for your website, you also need to save your inbox and prevent spam.
Akismet uses a variety of tactics to prevent spam comments and form submissions on your website.
This plugin is great because it just works. Install the plugin, walk through the initial setup, then leave it be. It’ll automatically safeguard your site from annoying automated spam.
Your email inbox will thank you!
4. Google Analytics Dashboard
If you don’t already use Google Analytics, this should be the first thing you do after finishing this post.
Google Analytics is a ridiculously powerful, free system from Google that tracks a website’s total traffic. It’s easy to install and collects a ton of data you can use to understand what visitors do on your website, how they found you, and so on.
It’s super simple to set up. Google Analytics Dashboard will authorize your Google account, walk you through a very easy setup process, and then you never have to worry about it again.
There are dozens of Google Analytics plugins, but the others aren’t as simple. It’s easier to make mistakes as they usually require copying your tracking code snippet—if you don’t already know what that means, go with Google Analytics Dashboard.
You can also see the most important website analytics every time you login to WordPress, so you can take a quick look without making a special trip to Google Analytics.
Setup Tip
If you’re anything like me, you’re always testing your site and loading the same page dozens of times to get it just right. So you don’t skew your own analytics with these pageviews, you should exclude administrator traffic.
Go to Google Analytics > Tracking Code > Exclude Tracking, then check the boxes for any users you’d rather not show up in your analytics.
This way, the SEO metrics you see will be your real audience.
5. Pixel Caffeine
Google Analytics has been around forever. The new kid on the block is the Facebook Pixel, a similar offering from Facebook.
Why do you need both? It’s always great to have multiple data sources so you can compare notes and see if anything looks inaccurate. But more importantly, Facebook advertising is highly effective (and cheap) for many businesses, and the Facebook Pixel opens up options to get more out of your ads.
Even if you don’t plan to advertise on Facebook, adding the Pixel to your site is still a good idea for the additional analytics and insights about your audience.
Click here for Facebook’s official, straightforward instructions to create your Pixel.
Once your Pixel is set up, install the Pixel Caffeine plugin to add it to your WordPress website.
Just like Google Analytics Dashboard, Pixel Caffeine makes it very easy to add the Facebook Pixel to every page.
And as you’ve come to expect from the last few plugins, you can just set it up once and forget about it, even as you create new pages and posts on your website.
Pixel Caffeine is the best option because of how easy it is for any user to get their Pixel up and running. It just works. And it’s a free tool developed by AdEspresso, the Facebook advertising arm of Hootsuite, one of the best social media marketing platforms—so you know it’s going to work.
6. MailChimp
If you don’t already use MailChimp, it’s a great place to start for your email marketing. You get 12,000 monthly emails and 2,000 subscribers for free, which is plenty for businesses just getting started with their email lists.
You should definitely be collecting email addresses on your website. It’s a huge missed opportunity to let your viewers leave your site without securing a way (their email address!) to bring them back to your site again.
The plugin works well with your MailChimp account, so there’s no confusion as you set up what list to subscribe users to and any other fields (like name) you want to capture.
Setup Tip
One drawback of this plugin is that you only get one form in the free version.
But you can set up a form and then include it in multiple places on your website, like on your homepage, contact page, sidebar, and wherever else you think users will be likely to sign up.
7. Popup Maker
If you want a simple, feature-rich plugin to add popups to your site, go with Popup Maker.
Popup plugins are among the worst for making you realize an hour after you start tinkering that you actually need the premium version.
We used Popup Maker to set up our email capture (why not give it a try?).
Popup Maker has everything you need to set up all kinds of popups. After setting up MailChimp for WordPress, embed your signup form in a popup and your website becomes a lead-generating machine.
Setup Tip
Popup Maker includes several decent-looking themes, but make sure you take time to customize them to match your site colors and fonts. You don’t want your popup to look like out of place spam!
8. UpdraftPlus
You’ve probably had several “computer catastrophes” by now, like hard drives crashing and viruses. These incidents can seriously hurt your productivity and cause major setbacks.
UpdraftPlus is a free plugin that helps you avoid time-wasting (and money-losing) website catastrophes.
Set it up to automatically make regular backups of your site, store the backups in a place of your choosing, and then sleep easier knowing you can recover from a website glitch or hacker in minutes, not days.
There are over a dozen options for where to store your backups, and one will definitely suit your needs. We recommend taking daily backups and retaining at least 10 so you have a little over a week to catch any issues with your site and restore a backup if necessary.
9. Really Simple SSL
SSL, or secure socket layer, creates a secure connection between your website and users so hackers can’t compromise their browsing. You may have also heard of this as “HTTPS”.
You might think you don’t need SSL if you aren’t selling anything or collecting sensitive data on your website, but think again.
In October 2017, Google Chrome started marking websites without SSL as “not secure”, which makes users nervous about using your website.
Since the fix is so easy, there’s no reason not to maintain your users’ confidence by setting up SSL.
Start by installing Really Simple SSL, which implements this important security measure on your site in just a few clicks.
There are several options for free SSL certificates that work just fine for most websites. Our favorite is Comodo Free SSL Certificates, a service from one of the most trusted SSL providers.
You might need some technical help to get your certificate—Comodo also has simple instructions if you want to give it a shot yourself.
Then once you have the certificate, set it up with Really Simple SSL to bring your users the security they deserve.
10. Ultimate Social Icons
The WordPress plugins directory is flooded with options for social media sharing. This makes sense because it’s one of the most important features your website can have. Who doesn’t want free advertising?
We recommend Ultimate Social Icons because it includes every platform you could want, many different button styles so they look great with your site, and plenty of options for how and where to display the icons.
Those are just a few of the 16 options for icons that come with this versatile plugin.
Many of the other options are “clunky” plugins, meaning they have tons of unnecessary extra code that slows down your site. Or they’re harder to set up or come with fewer free options.
11. Shortcodes Ultimate
If you have a solid paid WordPress theme, your WordPress might already be loaded with custom visual components (like image slideshows or fancy list displays).
Shortcodes Ultimate is still worth a mention as most WordPress sites could benefit from the plugin’s visual components. Laying out your content in the cleanest, simplest way possible is important to drive a positive impression with your customers.
This plugin includes more than 50 “shortcodes” that are easy to use in posts, pages, and other content areas across your site.
Take a look through the list of included shortcodes and see if any of them could improve your site appearance.
12. The Events Calendar
This may not be relevant for every website, but this phenomenal free plugin deserves a mention on our list.
The Events Calendar is by far the best free plugin to—as the name suggests—keep your site updated with upcoming events.
It’s very easy to add events, the calendar looks great right away, and the free version comes with tons of features.
Maybe dates are irrelevant for your particular business, but The Events Calendar is definitely the way to go if your website needs a calendar.
13. Google PageSpeed Insights
The next few plugins are related to your website performance, so you can give your viewers a blazing fast browsing experience.
Years ago, Google started considering website loading time (“pagespeed”) as one of their ranking factors. They have continually increased the impact of pagespeed, especially recently as mobile browsing has increased in popularity.
Pagespeed is important to Google because it is important to your users. Every second it takes your site to load can decrease your conversions by 7%, and 40% of users won’t wait around if your site takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Google has your back to help you speed up your website. They have a tool called PageSpeed Insights that you can use to identify opportunities to decrease loading time for specific pages on your site.
But there’s an even easier way. The Google PageSpeed Insights plugin automatically tests every page on your website so it’s easy to find pages with particularly big issues.
For each page, you can see the issues that are hurting your score and how to resolve the issues.
The next few plugins will help you increase your PageSpeed score, decrease your website loading time, and offer your users a buttery smooth browsing experience.
14. EWWW Image Optimizer
One of the easiest ways to decrease your website loading time is to use images with a smaller file size. You can decrease the file size of most images without any noticeable impact on image quality.
Many websites have hundreds or thousands of images, so fixing them manually would take forever. EWWW Image Optimizer will take care of this for you automatically.
This plugin will compress files behind-the-scenes as you upload them so you never have to worry about image file size again. And EWWW comes with a “bulk optimizer” so you can compress the images you uploaded to your site before setting up this plugin.
There are several other widely used image optimization plugins, like Smush and ShortPixel. As I tested all the options, I noticed EWWW has the best features and effectiveness without shelling out cash for the premium versions, which all the plugins offer.
15. Cloudflare
This plugin is a gift for pushing your website performance to the next level.
Cloudflare is a content delivery network and website optimization tool. Let’s break that down:
Content delivery network
Right now, your website is probably hosted on one server, wherever your hosting company is located. For this example, I’ll say your hosting company is in Texas.
Your website will load faster for users accessing it from Texas than for users from Ohio, Maine, or France. As users get further away from the server, your website will take longer to load.
Most hosting companies do not offer an option for where to host your site. So even if you’re a local restaurant in Ohio, your website might be hosted in California. That’s inefficient, and it’s also an unnecessary delay for your customers.
A content delivery network automatically hosts your site on multiple servers around the world. While you only update the one site as you always have, the changes are pushed to all these servers so users can connect to the server closest to them.
This alone can deliver drastic speed improvements.
Website optimizations
I’m not going to go too far into this so as to keep the post on-topic. Basically, there are a number of behind-the-scenes methods like caching and code “minifying” that speed up your site.
It’s hard to explain these concepts without going into the technical background. What you need to know is they are very important for your website loading time, and they have the highest impact on your Google PageSpeed score.
Fortunately, you don’t need any technical background here. Cloudflare takes care of these optimizations automatically.
Why Cloudflare?
We recommend Cloudflare over other similar offerings because it’s reliable, easy to use, and the free version is adequate for most websites. If you get thousands of visitors per day, you probably need one of their paid plans, but the pricing is very reasonable for the enormous benefits.
The Cloudflare plugin makes it easy to get started. You probably don’t even need a website developer to help set it up, but the installation process does involve changing your domain name’s DNS settings.
This is easy to do with popular domain companies like GoDaddy, so it’s up to you whether you handle this step yourself or ask an IT professional for help.
Avoid These Popular Plugins
We recommend steering clear of these widely used WordPress plugins, as they cause more harm than good and there are many better options.
Jetpack
This plugin is one of the most popular, which isn’t too surprising as it’s developed by Automattic, the creators of WordPress itself.
Jetpack has plenty of drawbacks and we recommend using (superior) alternatives. Jetpack bills itself as multi-use plugin with tons of important features, which is true.
Frankly, it screws up your site. Jetpack is a very “clunky” plugin that will decrease your site performance. It causes issues with many WordPress themes and many other plugins, so you might spend hours troubleshooting an issue only to find uninstalling Jetpack was the one-second solution.
For all the features you get with Jetpack, there are better options. Here are a few examples:
Site stats and analytics – use Google Analytics instead
Brute force attack protection – this feature is included with Cloudflare
Email subscriptions – MailChimp for WordPress does just fine
Contact forms – Ninja Forms is far superior
I could go on. For some of the Jetpack features not covered in this post, simply search the feature in the plugins list and you’ll certainly find a better option.
Sumo
As one of the most popular social media marketing services, this might come as a surprise.
It’s a shame, since Sumo has a lot of great free features to improve your digital marketing. But the Sumo WordPress plugin is really bad.
We actually used to have Sumo on this website. When I removed it, the website started loading 1-2 seconds faster. That’s a big difference.
The benefits of the plugin’s social sharing features are offset by all the visitors who leave your site since it’s so freaking slow.
MailChimp for WordPress, Popup Maker, and Ultimate Social Icons achieve the same goal without sending your site to the stone age. The extra effort is worth it!
Improve Your WordPress Site With These Plugins
Any of these plugins will go a long way—and all of them will make your website a superstar.
To recap, here are all the features you get with these free plugins:
To recap, here are all the features you get with these free plugins:
SEO enhancements
Robust contact forms
Spam prevention
Detailed traffic analytics
Better Facebook advertising
Email marketing
Dynamic popups
Automated backups
Secured website
Social sharing
Simple events calendar
Automated page speed monitoring
Image compression
Lightning fast website speed
Not bad for free! (Speaking of free, here’s how to get a free domain name.)
We love WordPress for this reason—you’d have to pay a fortune or spend hundreds of hours to get all these features anywhere else. This enables website design companies like us to offer more affordable prices, since we’re equipped with so many tools to give you the site you want.
If you have any questions about these plugins or anything else about your WordPress site, drop us a line and let us know how we can help.
Are you a small business without a website? Sorry to be a hater, but every business needs a website, otherwise you risk extinction.
This isn’t the boy who cried wolf. It’s an honest alarm.
Before we get into why, let me explain a high-level approach at the new business world.
Retail giants are in desperation mode after seeing other giants fall:
Circuit City declared bankruptcy in 2008
Blockbuster submitted bankruptcy filing in 2010
Sports Authority filed bankruptcy in 2016
Toys “R” Us goes bankrupt in 2017
I’m not making the point these companies didn’t have websites, because they certainly did. But they didn’t have a smart digital strategy to sustain their business or take it to the next level in the future.
For example, Toys “R” Us made a terrible decision by choosing to use Amazon for its e-commerce in 2000 instead of building out its own digital e-commerce store. When Toys “R” Us finally decided to get off the Amazon drug and wisely build their own e-commerce capability, they were already years behind their competitors and struggled to catch up.
The toy giant’s costly move to ignore its own online presence and online sales contributed strongly to its future bankruptcy (while Amazon’s profits are richer than ever).
The point is that you don’t want your company to ignore its online sales and become the Toys “R” Us of your space while your competitors steal your customers.
We’ve seen how that ends. We at Robben Media want you to stay in business and thrive.
The only way to future-proof your business is to be on top of the newest trends: having a website to greet online shoppers and turn them into customers.
No Website, No Online Sales
I hear the counterargument all the time when I do sales for my digital marketing company, “Oh no, we don’t need a website or online advertising. We use word of mouth to bring in new business.”
The funny part of this story is more often than not when I hear this I’m standing in their office lobby and it looks like a ghost town, kid you not.
In my head I’m thinking, “Sure looks like you could use some more sales! You sure you have enough income to pay for the electricity bill this month?”
Business clearly isn’t booming and they don’t have a website, you put the pieces together.
Now I’m not naive to think the only thing that can derail a business from bringing in new customers is the lack of a website. They could have a terrible product, zero marketing, unhelpful service, or rude customer support among other issues that are hurting the company’s success.
However, you can’t be too naive to believe that more online sales wouldn’t help a business grow into the modern world we live in. You’d have to dismiss the success of Amazon altogether to hold such an ancient perspective.
That’s billions of dollars of revenue left on the table that each old-school company can grab a piece of the pie by adding a website and running online marketing campaigns to grab the consumer’s dollars.
Maybe they falsely believe their type of company doesn’t need a website. Maybe they don’t realize the power of online marketing. Maybe they’re scared of what they don’t know in a technical aspect. Maybe they’re stuck in the “we’ve always done lead generation this way” mindset. Or maybe they don’t believe they have the money for one.
Who knows the real reason, among plenty of other excuses I didn’t mention. I’d guess it’s a combination of all the above.
What I’m absolutely certain about is the loss of sales in the short-term and long-term for these website-less businesses. That’s undeniable.
Below is a list of every major benefit companies without a website and online traffic miss out on.
Reasons Websites Generate Sales
A solid website can become the x-factor of your entire business going forward. Don’t underestimate its potential.
1. Websites market your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
A website is truly your digital storefront with the best part being it’s always marketing your products and services 24/7/365, even when your office is closed.
It doesn’t need a lunch break, to sleep, or to recharge over the weekend.
And vacations (like in beautiful Miami)? Your website has you covered. Holidays? Check. When you’re home taking care of your sick child? Done, don’t sweat it.
Literally any example you can think of, your piece of digital real estate will keep working for your business when you and your employees call it a day or take off work.
Get a solid, modern website and it will market your offerings non-stop to new visitors. This kind of workhorse effort should win employee of the month, every month!
2. Websites help your business get in front of new customers.
For local B2C businesses, thousands of consumers a day in a 10 mile radius of your business are typing in “(insert desired service) near me.” And people are also just as much searching for solutions from B2B companies.
Guess what? The companies with websites compete to be near the top result. And the companies without a website aren’t even in the game. They have a 0% chance to bring in any of these active online customers.
Also you can pair Google ads or Facebook ads with your website to jump to the top of these searches and promote your services at a very cheap rate of a few dollars per click. With no website, you can’t use the best modern advertising methods—Google (with callout extensions) and Facebook ads—to your advantage.
If you get in the game of attracting new customers by having a website built, marketing your business will take a giant leap forward.
3. Websites bring in more profits for your business.
It gets better than just marketing. With a well-designed website optimized for business conversions, your inbox will be filled with new leads and sales orders for you to wake up to.
That’s the definition of making money while you sleep—every sales rep and business owner’s dream come true.
All you have to set up on your new site is a form to capture visitors contact information—perfect for insurance companies, consultants, and software companies who need to have a consultation or demo to move the buying process forward.
And if you’re selling a product or service that can be bought right away, utilize an e-commerce plugin to let the customer buy from your site right then and there.
Besides being a master marketer and salesman, what else can the website do for your business?
4. Websites improve customer service by communicating important information.
Your site also acts as a communications center to answer customer questions, explain the benefits of choosing your business, and inform them of your company policies.
Just take a look at how some of our customers utilize their website to improve customer service:
A local baseball organization has a homepage list with all of their tournaments by date, name, age group, fields, and cost to enter
A dog groomer has a FAQs page to answer questions about what dogs they groom, the services they provide, and what payments they accept
A shopper software company utilizes video to explain their online tool and has a button for requesting a demo
This will save plenty of incoming phone calls and email correspondence when you can link to a page that already answers their questions to a tee. Plus, if there’s any confusion by a customer, they can always fill out the form on the Contact page to get clarification too.
It’s always good customer service to deliver answers to customer questions that’s just one click away.
5. Websites boost your company’s credibility and trust.
Not having a website is almost as bad as not having a business name. It’s sketchy. People like to see the copyright, address, telephone number in your footer.
They like to see your office building on the site or a picture of the CEO. Personifying your company in these manners builds trust, and we all know customers need to trust you before they pull the trigger to buy from you.
It’s not even the digital marketer in me who says this: If I see a company without a website, I 100% question if they’re still in business anymore. It’s a red flag for me and a concern for some other potential customers of yours.
Instead of giving the public a shaky feeling about your business, give them the opposite emotion of trust through a knockout website that shows we’re legitimate and ready to serve your needs.
6. Websites make it easy to expand your presence.
Businesses have been built solely on the back of search engine traffic (SEO), and you’re trying to say that free traffic from Google searches isn’t valuable to your business?
That’s crazy talk, especially if you have ambitions of growing a statewide, regional, or national presence in the future.
Even if you’re only local, you also won’t have to pay for online ads if you have a steady stream of organic traffic coming from Google.
And even if you don’t want to grow your business, wouldn’t it be nice to raise your prices because of high demand? That’s more money to go in the pockets of your loyal employees and your own as the business owner.
Or you could take the work you want and profit share with a smaller company to send them business since you’ll have more than enough after your SEO kicks in.
7. Websites save you money and time.
Consider this. The average cost of one employee is say anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000 or more per year for a small business, and the average cost of a standard website is around $1,000 to $3,000 for the build and then a small monthly hosting fee.
And already we’ve laid out how your online presence will improve your company’s marketing, sales, customer service, and brand reputation.
Couldn’t you let a few employees on your staff go since the website would make their previous job responsibilities redundant? That could be cost-savings of over $100,000 plus.
And an informative website with a helpful Frequently Asked Questions page can also save your employees time since they can redirect phone callers to the website instead of explaining the policies.
Since time is also money for a business, the question should be changed from where are you going to find the extra money for a business website to how can you afford not to invest in one?
8. Websites work to future-proof your business in the growing digital economy.
I see it time and time again. A company relied on radio, magazine, tv, billboard, or other old-school advertising to generate business. But then this well dried up and they have no way to make up ground in the new digital company.
Companies with mobile-ready websites are prepared for the new mobile age. Not only that, if done right, their website is actively:
Capturing emails to communicate and build relationships with their audience
Linking to the company’s social media pages (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter LinkedIn) to build their followers and stay top of mind with consistent posts
Pointing people to their Google listing to leave a review
Producing social media shares from their blog posts
Getting customer feedback to improve business operations
A website done right can build a future-proof base of touch points with your customers.
Plus, if a new technology comes out bigger than the internet—doubt it, but possible—you just lead your website traffic to that new platform and carry on.
Your Business Needs A Website
Call us at Robben Media biased since we sell websites. But I swear I’d be singing the same song if we sold piano lessons.
A website is critical to your business success. Some would argue there’s nothing more important based on its versatility to win you more business.
Do the best thing for your company and get in the digital world to connect with your audience. After all, you wouldn’t want to starve your business of these benefits.
Websites market your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Websites help your business get in front of new customers.
Websites bring in more profits for your business.
Websites improve customer service by communicating important information.
Websites boost your company’s credibility and trust.
Websites make it easy to expand your presence.
Websites save you money and time.
Websites work to future-proof your business in the growing digital economy.
And if you have a website but it’s bad—ugly, hard to navigate, not mobile optimized, doesn’t clearly communicate what you do, doesn’t convert sales—you’re in the same sinking boat.
Just as a 100-year-old company may have technical debt and need upgrades, you too need to upgrade your digital real estate with a new and improved website. Sure it’s an investment, but the new website should more than pay for itself in the first year it’s up.
You’ll also change your company’s trajectory from the path toward extinction toward one of hopeful promise.
Why risk going out of business when your company can thrive online?
P.S. Looking for a website design company to get your company back up to speed in the digital world? Work with Robben Media.
Looking for a top Cincinnati web design company? Whether your old site needs a makeover or you’re starting from scratch, a professional looking website that converts is a must.
Don’t believe my word for it. Let’s get into the evidence.
Just like first impressions matter when you meet someone face to face, the first impression your website makes when an online visitor scans it plays a tremendous role in their future actions.
According to a study, you only have 50 milliseconds to impress your audience with your website’s visual appeal.
Think about that: Not even 1 second goes by before your website’s appearance is judged!
The evidence is undeniable: attractive web design is critical to shining a positive light on your business.
And another study found that the more visually appealing the website it is, the longer the visitor stays on your website.
I’m not surprised, are you?
To sum it up, effective web design influences the first impression and the duration of the visit to your online pages. It’s obvious to conclude that impressing the visitor and keeping them on your site longer increases the odds you convert them into paying customers.
Meaning web design directly translates—and plays a major role—in the profitability of your business.
With real dollars to be won or lost based on the quality of your website, you shouldn’t trust yourself or your nephew to throw together C- level work.
You need an outstanding online appearance designed by professionals.
So who should you hire? This article is going to help you find the top Cincinnati web design company for your business website.
Qualities To Look For In A Web Design Company
All web design companies are not the same.
Some won’t listen to your vision for the site. Some add no business sense in their design. Others won’t have the skills to deliver a timely project. And some are unqualified on all fronts.
Avoid wasting your time and budget.
Instead, follow the three step process below to find the perfect company for your web design project.
1. Look at their website portfolio
First things first: Always ask a web design company you’re thinking about hiring for a sample of 3-5 websites they’ve done for previous customers.
This gives you an understanding for how experienced, credible, and skilled a company is at designing a website before you ever sign something. This is the single best way to weed out the contenders from the pretenders. Plus, you’re able to get a feel for who can truly fulfill your project needs.
There’s also a big difference in web design skills needed to build a personal blog compared to a national insurance company that sells millions of dollars a year through its website.
Better to know the web design company’s quality of work now than get surprised after you sign when they can’t deliver what you need.
Another question to ask them is how many years members of their team have spent building websites. I’d be skeptical if the person doing your site hasn’t been in this space for at least a few years.
Once you confirm a company has a solid portfolio and experience to deliver what you want done, next you need to look at their business mindset.
2. Evaluate their business sense
A beautiful website is important, don’t get me wrong. I’ll be the first person to argue about the value of visual design.
That’s why a common mistake of some web developers is to only build the most aesthetically pleasing sites. Doing so, they forget to consider how SEO traffic will interact with the site, where the company can gather leads, and how to optimize features to maximize in store or online sales.
Amazing graphic design and images can’t ever make up for poor business strategy. A site that doesn’t lead visitors down a road to visit in store, give their email, fill out a form, or buy right then and there is a huge missed opportunity.
You need both visually pleasing pages and a conversion-focused layout (with the strategy mentioned in the sentence) to grow your business. That’s an absolute must in this age.
So if you find yourself gong any entire conversation without the web design company asking you about your business and the sales purposes of the website, you’re talking to the wrong company and should look elsewhere.
At Robben Media, we design all of our customer websites with an eye for what’s going to convert the most traffic into sales. We know the website isn’t about winning a design award, but convincing visitors to go from curious prospects to paying customers.
Without any business acumen behind the design process, the website can look pretty but it misses the main point: to bring more cash flow into the company.
Watch out for web design companies that don’t have business knowledge and a team of Cincinnati SEO experts.
3. Get a fair website quote and timeline
Say by now you’ve found a qualified website design team that is also business savvy.
It’s time for the difficult conversation. Because they can be the best designers and smartest business thinkers on the planet, but you’re going to have a heart attack when they ask you to pay your company’s entire annual revenue up front.
To avoid any surprises and misunderstandings, you need to get a quote of the project cost to see if you’re on the same page price wise as the Cincinnati web design company.
Price shouldn’t be the ultimate deciding factor since better designed sites bring in multiples more revenue. Though it does need to be in a reasonable ballpark so you can make a positive return on investment of this new website cost.
With a fair price in hand, the last hoop to jump is figuring out if your new website can be published in your desired timeline.
Different web designers have faster and slower work rates plus more or less human resources to throw at the project, which could drag out the completion date for weeks or months.
For businesses that need a website up fast to launch a new franchise location, for example, ensuring the project will be completed in time for the marketing rollout is critical.
Just understand your business and how important the turnaround time is before signing a company that can’t deliver a finished website that you need.
If a company says it’ll take a month longer than you need done to finish a website, you’d be wise to go elsewhere with your project.
Finish this step by finding a fair quote and project timeline that makes sense for your business. With enough web design companies out there, don’t settle for an unfair price or unreasonable project completion schedule.
Final Web Design Thoughts
Hire your nephew to design one of the single most important customer facing assets of your business or rush this web design selection process, and the growth of your business will take a significant hit.
We recommend you don’t do either.
Instead, we encourage you to ask plenty of questions so you have enough information to select the right Cincinnati web design company given your needs and values.
And remember to ask relevant questions as you go through the three step process below to find a winning company:
Look at their website portfolio.
Evaluate their business sense.
Get a fair website quote and timeline.
As your digital sign, the design of your website plays the most important visual role of your entire business.
A well-designed site convinces potential customers to buy. A poorly designed site does the opposite and causes visitors to quickly click out of your page to visit and spend their money with your competitors.
Make sure you’re maximizing your business’ profits by picking the right Cincinnati web design company!
It’ll make all the difference in the world to grow your company.
If you aren’t using WordPress for your business website already, there’s a huge chance you’re wasting time. Read on to learn why WordPress is almost definitely the way to go.
Hopefully, you have a business website already or you’re thinking about making one, and that’s why you’re reading this post. Despite the growth of social media, an up-to-date website is still the cornerstone of your small business’ online presence.
You have a ton of options when it comes to making your website:
Code it from scratch (you crazy hacker)
Use a managed service like Wix, Weebly, or Squarespace
Create it with web design software like Adobe Muse
Get your site up at lightspeed by using WordPress
Let’s explore why each option other than WordPress is likely a colossal waste of your time.
If you’re thinking about coding it from scratch, you do have a special place in my heart. But, take it from a coder: you probably don’t want to do that. If you don’t know how to code, let me just intimidate you for a minute:
Nerd talk here: In order to make a functional, modern website, you need to have a working knowledge of HTML and CSS at a minimum. You should probably know some JavaScript too so you can add modern web elements. Skills in PhotoShop or another graphic design software will help too, so you can make your site pretty. After you code your basic template, make sure you fine-tune all your breakpoints so your website is responsive for tablets and mobile phones as well. Thinking about adding any interactive content, like forms for your customers? Add PHP and CSS to the list as well! And be prepared to test all of this on multiple devices and optimize the performance as well.
Does that sound like fun to you? If so, perhaps you should take up web design rather than your current profession! Seriously, it takes a ton of time to establish your basic knowledge and then to stay current with new languages and frameworks. If you’re a dentist, plumber, or dog groomer, I don’t think it’s the best use of your time.
Even if you do know how to code and want to DIY your website, use WordPress. The benefits I’ll describe below are worth it.
Let’s evaluate managed services like Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace. These may seem like great options. It’s true you can get a website up in just a few minutes, maybe even for free.
But the free versions are quite limited and likely only sufficient for the most basic uses. So you’re probably going to end up paying.
Take SquareSpace for example: they’re going to shake you down for at least $12 per month (if you pay for a year upfront—it’s $16 per month otherwise).
20 pages and 2 contributors? Wow, what a steal!
These arbitrary limits are in place so they can shake you down for more money later.
So now we’re thinking about web design software like Adobe Muse, since custom coding and managed services are miserable.
The biggest benefit is you get to edit your website and template exactly as they look on the web (well, in theory). Sure, it’s easy, but it’s often quirky and difficult to troubleshoot. WordPress is easier anyway.
These sites are also notorious for having bloated code—yes, bloated like you after a huge meal. You know how after you indulge in a feast, you can’t help but move slowly? Web design software makes sites that are just as bloated.
Yes, it’s just the code and you’re not touching it, but what’s under the hood really matters. Bloated code leads to slower page speeds. And slow page speeds will make your customers sad.
Since your website doesn’t have much of a point if Google buries it to the depths of slow-page-speed hell, you may as well do it right.
Now let’s talk about WordPress, the holy grail of web development.
If it seems like I’m trying to sell you something, well, I’m not. WordPress is completely free!
It’s also popular—really popular. WordPress powers 59% of all CMS websites and 27% of every website you’ve ever visited. Talk about market share!
So, it’s free and popular, which means lots of support, online resources, and people who can help with your WordPress site. It’s also simple, flexible, and constantly updated. You’ll save more time by using WordPress than pretty much any other method. There’s really not much of a downside.
After you read these benefits, you’ll never consider another option for your website again.
Join me on this quest towards time-saving salvation and I’m willing to bet I’ll convince you WordPress is right for your business website.
Save Time By Using WordPress For Your Business Website
WAIT—Don’t Do It!
I know what you did.
It’s OK, I don’t blame you.
You got really excited about WordPress, and you decided to get started without reading the rest of this post.
I’m actually pretty sure your screen looks something like this right now:
Here’s why you need to keep reading (trust me on this one):
If you clicked any of the first eight links rather than the last one, you clicked incorrectly.
While WordPress.com sounds like what you’re looking for, it’s not. It’s a managed service similar to SquareSpace, like we discussed before.
And you guessed it, they’re trying to sell you something.
What they’re trying to sell you is not the WordPress you deserve. It’s watered down, restricted, and far too expensive for the value you get.
You’re looking for WordPress.org, which is the completely free website platform I’m gushing about.
Read until the end and I’ll tell you how to get set up in minutes. But first I have to tell you why it’s the only way to go.
Themes, themes, themes! = more options for you
Designing a website can be like building a home. So many choices, and you want it to be perfect!
You’ll be pleased with the extensive number of WordPress theme options. Odds are, you’ll be able to find a theme that’s very close to what you’re looking for. Then it’ll be easy to customize it the rest of the way.
The official WordPress site is stocked with thousands of themes, and you can install them directly from your WordPress dashboard in one click. Many of these themes are free.
Sites like ThemeForest are also loaded with tons of great options. Prices range from $20-60, which is well worth it to avoid dozens of hours of design and development time.
It’s also likely you’ll be able to find a theme already customized for your industry, whether you’re a catering company or plumber.
Once you set up a theme, it’s easy to change the colors, upload your logo, and populate the content.
And when you decide your site needs a facelift, just install a new theme and all your content will still be there.
The other options have themes too, but there are fewer options and they aren’t as customizable or convenient.
Thousands of plugins to customize your website
If you’re coding your own website, you’re not going to have fun when you want to add features like contact forms, photo galleries, and newsletter sign-ups.
And if you used a managed service or web design software, you’re not going to appreciate their limited options.
WordPress has you covered with thousands of free (and paid) plugins to add features to your site that will grow your business.
Let’s say you want to add a contact form to your homepage and create a “contact us” page. Just search for contact form plugins and you’ll be well on your way.
After you install and activate a plugin, there won’t be much more work left to do. Many plugins will work “out of the box.”
If you’re looking to add one of these features to your site and you aren’t using WordPress, you better not be picky—you won’t have many options. But with the massive WordPress plugin library, you can just uninstall any plugins that don’t work how you want and pick another one.
I already mentioned the sheer volume of websites hosted on WordPress.
This means lots of people who know how to make WordPress sites.
And this means you can Google pretty much any question and find hundreds of people who have asked the same thing before. When I’m working on WordPress sites, I never have to look too hard to find an answer.
It also means that if you choose to work with a digital media company to create or maintain your website, any company should be able to jump right in.
The huge community also means an ever-growing ecosystem of plugins, themes, and website updates. WordPress isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Learn in minutes
WordPress is intuitive. It’s one of the best user interfaces I’ve ever seen.
It’s simple and it just works. For websites with basic features, you aren’t going to hit too many roadbumps along the way.
I really believe it’s the easiest platform in existence to make a website.
I’ve been coding and making websites for 15 years. When I take on a project and the client’s existing website isn’t on WordPress, I can feel like I’m stumbling around in the dark a bit.
And that’s me—someone who has spent thousands of hours learning new platforms and coding. I can only imagine how hard it must be for business owners who don’t know too much about technology and just want to spend a few hours to get a website up.
I didn’t even start using WordPress until a few years ago (shocking, I know). After I did, I realized what I was missing out on and never looked back when doing any Cincinnati website design.
Do the right thing and pick the solution that just works.
Easy to update
Oh look, I need to update one of my websites!
I’m pretty busy, so good thing WordPress also offers one-click updates for the core platform, plugins, and themes.
You might be tempted not to update your website. I could write another post about why this could be a huge mistake.
Keeping your site secure is vital if you store customer information or process payments on your website. Even if you don’t, hackers are still targeting your site so they can try to add things to your site and trick your customers. It’s not good either way.
A site that is secure today could be massively compromised tomorrow. Hackers are constantly looking for new exploits. That’s where updates come in—Norton AntiVirus isn’t going to help you this time.
There are benefits other than security improvements too. Updates might bring you more features, faster performance, bug fixes, and other tweaks to help your site keep up with new web-browsing devices and technologies.
If updating your website takes half an hour, you’re probably going to procrastinate since you’re so busy. That’s why WordPress updates are very speedy, and you can even turn on automatic updates.
Your site is YOUR SITE
With WordPress, you have full control over your website and data. You can back everything up at any time, move your website to another provider, or make whatever change you may need.
You can install any plugin or theme you want. You can even modify the code WordPress runs on (not that you should).
Let’s say your web hosting company goes downhill. You can migrate your WordPress site to another company in minutes.
Other solutions may have export features, but you’re out of luck if they don’t work.
And as far as customizing your site, impossible is not an option with WordPress. With enough tinkering, you can get your site to do whatever you want. Other more restrictive options may just not support what you’re looking to do.
Simple to implement “must-haves”
These days, your site absolutely must check a few boxes:
Mobile compatibility
Search engine optimized
Fast and efficient
Secure
You may have to invest some man-hours to check these boxes with other solutions.
As you may have guessed, that’s not the case with WordPress!
Avoid picking themes that aren’t mobile compatible. Most themes nowadays will be. This means your site will work on any device without any extra work on your end.
WordPress will offer your users snappy page loading times.
And as it’s easy to keep your site updated, it’s secure.
Engage your audience
Your website should be designed with audience engagement in mind. Get your customers excited and talking about your business!
Since most users spend fewer than 15 seconds on your website, you should add a few features to keep them on your site longer. WordPress makes this a piece of cake!
You should also use your site to build an email list, so you can keep your customers in the loop. Sign up for a free MailChimp account and add an email signup form or popup.
Whatever your business does, an engaged online audience will undoubtedly lead to more sales. That’s why the time and money you spend maintaining your website and social media are a worthwhile investment. WordPress ensures your investment will pay more dividends for your business than any other option.
Just like other open-source projects like Android, Wikipedia, and Linux, WordPress is an incredibly high-quality platform because tons of brilliant, committed people are working on it. They believe in the mission of helping businesses like yours get the word out to customers without paying an arm and leg.
Though WordPress is free, and you can get a free domain name like robbenmedia.com, you’ll need to pay for hosting from a company like Bluehost to get your site live.
While other services are $8-12 per month or more, you can find a quality web hosting company for as low as $3-4 per month. And this can even support your site as you add more complex features or bring in more web traffic—other services will make you upgrade to premium $25-30 per month packages and beyond.
Beyond that, you could do everything completely free. There are plenty of free themes and plugins. You’ll also have the option to make your life easier with paid add-ons—but you get to decide when that’s worth it, and you’ll still likely save money and end up with a higher-quality site.
WordPress will still be there for you when your business takes off, you’re leveraging SEO to grow organically, and you make your way into the Fortune 500.
With millions of page views, you may need to get a more expensive hosting package and make some performance tweaks. But you’ll still be able to ride WordPress all the way to the top.
Huge sites like MTV News, Sony Music, The Walt Disney Company, and even Beyonce are powered by WordPress. You may not be able to tell because they are heavily customized, but I wouldn’t lie to you!
Ultra-quick set up
You may have been attracted to SquareSpace because they brag about “one-click install” and “easy set-up.” WordPress is just as easy!
Once you quickly sign up for your hosting account, most services offer WordPress one-click install features.
This means you input a few simple options like your site name, click install, and then start customizing your site immediately.
The few extra clicks involved with setting up your own WordPress platform will pay off for years to come. You’ll thank me when you start making thousands of dollars because of customizations you made to your website.
Convinced? Get Started With WordPress
As a parting gift, here’s a quick guide to get your WordPress website off the ground.
First, sign up for an Bluehost hosting account. After much research, I am convinced they’re the best option at a great price. Their cheapest package is less than $4 per month, and it should be enough for many businesses.
Once you log into your hosting account dashboard, you’ll see this. Click WordPress.
Click install, then fill out a few very simple options.
After this, you’ll see a few links and receive an email with your installation details. You’re good to go to log in. It’s that easy to install WordPress and get started!
Even though WordPress is pretty easy, it’s perfectly understandable if you don’t have the time your website deserves. You can use WordPress to create an excellent site quickly—or you can get your site up even more quickly by working with a website design company to take care of it for you. We clearly love WordPress, so we’d be glad to help.
And if you have any questions about your new WordPress site, I’d be happy to point you in the right direction as well.
Could your business website use a facelift? Update your website to the 21st century and convert more sales with these 9 simple strategies.
Your website is basically your virtual secretary now. In the past, customers would call with their questions or perhaps even drive by. (gasp)
Now, most information any customer would ever want to know is available on websites and social media.
On the bright side, you don’t have to answer the phone as much anymore. But this trend makes it vital for you to maintain an updated website—especially if your business targets young people.
I’ve evaluated the online presence of countless businesses. Sometimes, I’m honestly just happy to see the business has a website at all!
But your old Geocities website from 2002 is not enough, unfortunately. Just as it’s important to update your product and service offerings over time to evolve with new trends, it’s important to have a website that looks like it’s from this century.
Your website doesn’t need to be a ridiculously fancy expensive project with tons of bells and whistles. I’m not talking Lamborghini here, I’m talking Ford. (But let’s go for the gently used 2012 Ford Focus rather than an experimental model Henry Ford himself created).
According to Google, 50% of local searches lead customers to visit stores within one day.
Follow these nine simple strategies to make sure those searches show your business at the top rather than your competition.
9 Strategies To Update Your Business Website
1. Use WordPress
Don’t make your job harder than it has to be, especially if you’re making your website yourself. But whether you’re flying solo or working with a company to make the website for you, I strongly encourage using WordPress in almost every situation.
WordPress is the most popular Content Management System (CMS). That might be gibberish, so let me explain.
CMS platforms enable you to update your site’s content without touching a line of code. They also make it way easier to update your site design and add new features. You can make changes to your site that could take 10-15x more time on a standard oldschool website.
You’ll be in good company as WordPress powers 59% of all CMS websites and 27% of all websites in general.
Along with being the most popular comes a massive library of free and paid themes, free plugins, and support—and quite a few freelancers and companies who service WordPress sites.
You can also make content changes at lightspeed—yes, you. Even if you’re not tech-savvy, you don’t have to spend hours learning or take a class to learn how to change a few words or add a new image to your WordPress site.
Making changes is just about as difficult as checking your account balance on your bank website.
This matters because it means you can rapidly update your site, ensuring outdated information never overstays its welcome.
Most people (especially millennials) chuckle when they see old content on a website, like a menu or employee of the month from 2012.
WordPress is the best choice for most situations. Sometimes, other options like Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, or even a custom-built site might be best for you. But chances are, WordPress is the way to go.
Even if you’re making an extremely simple one-page site, use WordPress. I’m very confident you won’t regret it.
Quick note on WordPress: there is a difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com. The former, which I linked earlier, is the open-source (free) CMS you can install on any web host. The latter is a paid hosting service with a watered-down WordPress installation.
I do not suggest WordPress.com. They have stripped many customization options and limited the plugins you can install.
Instead, create an account on a web hosting company like Bluehost and use their one-click WordPress install feature. This is a cheaper option that preserves your ability to customize your site going forward.
2. Get a modern, clean template
Does your site look like this?
Your website’s design is just as important as updated information.
Some customers navigate away from “disaster sites” to avoid the impending search-and-rescue mission of finding their desired information. I may be one of them.
The thought is: Why should I have any hope the business has updated their hours, when it looks like they haven’t touched this site since George W. Bush was president?
Seriously though, your website’s look is important. It’s just as much a characterization of your brand as your logo or your physical location.
Again, you don’t have to spend much money for a nice, clean template. In fact, you don’t have to spend any money. Sites like ThemeForest are loaded with thousands of paid and free templates for WordPress and other CMS platforms.
Save time by looking for a theme already tweaked for your niche. Yes, you may even be able to find a highly specific theme for Mexican restaurants or wedding photographers.
You can install some themes directly from the WordPress control panel by searching the official WordPress theme database.
If you’re downloading a theme from a third-party site like ThemeForest, it’s as easy as downloading a zip file and then uploading it to your WordPress instance.
Some themes are highly customizable while others offer more limited settings.
Don’t worry if you can’t find a theme that’s exactly how you want it—you probably won’t. The theme may have settings to change exactly what you want. It’s generally very easy to change the site colors and upload your logo.
All hope is lost for more complex changes, you don’t have to light the whole theme on fire. There may be a plugin to help you achieve your goal. Or you can ask a consulting company or freelancer how much it would cost to change something for you.
Show your customers you’re a business that keeps up with the times by having a modern website.
3. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly
I can’t emphasize this enough: your mobile design is just as important as your desktop design, if not more important.
More consumers are browsing the web on their mobile devices than ever before. And they’ll be way less patient clicking around your website on a 4″ screen than they’ll be on their laptop.
When you’re browsing for themes, look for the words “responsive design.” This means the content and design scale to any screen size, whether that’s a tiny phone or massive TV monitor.
If your theme is not responsive, pick another one. It’s almost definitely a bad theme that has more issues than just this.
If you have an old website that was designed in DreamWeaver or a WordPress theme from more than a few years ago, your site is probably not responsive.
Actually, it’s almost definitely not responsive. This means it’s time for an update.
Google penalizes sites that aren’t mobile-friendly. And Google search ranking is a “make or break” factor for many businesses. This reason alone may be enough to hop on the mobile bandwagon.
Visual content is far more compelling than text. On the web, a picture is worth even more than a thousand words. (That’s a lot of words to read, anyway.)
Include an attractive splash photo at the top of your front page—your theme probably makes this easy. Add a photo gallery plugin and feature your products or services. Embed a video with customer interviews or other promotional content.
Whatever you do, focus more on visual content and less on text.
5. Install a contact form
Since many customers don’t call anymore, make it easy for them to contact you right from your website.
Sure, you can list your email address and phone number, but this still involves extra steps. Why not embed a contact form directly on your site?
Because it’s complicated? No, it’s not. You can get a simple contact form up and running very quickly with WordPress plugins.
It can be as easy as installing a plugin, configuring the form with your email address, naming the fields, and then selecting what page you want to add it on.
Make it as easy as possible for your customers—who may give you money—to get in touch with you.
6. Publish posts on your blog on a regular basis
Blog? Yes, you have a blog now. This is a core feature of WordPress and any theme you could ever download!
Content marketing is a powerful strategy. Fresh, high-quality content boosts your website’s position in search engine results and gives your customers a reason to keep returning to your site.
Of course, more is better as long as you’re posting high-quality content rather than short low-effort posts, which do nothing for your search engine rankings or engagement. But you don’t need to publish a post every day.
Even publishing something once per month is way better than not having a blog at all.
One online marketing expert stopped blogging for eight months as an experiment. He saw a 32% drop in overall traffic and 42% drop in organic traffic. Don’t send your site to the graveyard.
Just publish on a consistent basis: monthly on the 15th day; weekly on Monday; every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Google’s crawlers intelligently check your site for updates based on how often you publish posts. As far as Google is concerned, consistency is king.
7. Link to your social media profiles, add social sharing icons
Add social media icons so customers can connect with you on these important channels. Your theme may have built-in social media icons. If not, there are hundreds of plugins offering this feature, like this and this.
There are also plugins to embed a feed of your Facebook posts, Instagram photos, and many other options.
And plugins to add social sharing features, offering your site visitors one-click sharing functionality—which you really want! This free plugin offers both share buttons and social icons.
Integrating your site with your social media profiles is the way to go. This multi-channel, integrated strategy will surely help you reach more customers.
8. Add a Google Map with your location (for brick-and-mortar businesses)
For businesses with a physical location: you might imagine by now it’s easy to embed your Google Maps location on WordPress.
Even if you’re not ready to leave behind your old HTML website, it’s still easy to use the Google Maps API to add a customized map. You won’t have to do much more than copy-and-paste some HTML code to the correct location.
But because coding is likely not the best use of your time (for most of our readers), there are fortunately WordPress plugins that take care of this for you as well like this one.
This is a professional, modern addition to any homepage or contact page. More than just a “nice touch,” this just might push more customers to stop in.
9. Spice it up with some modern web elements
I promised you don’t have to learn how to code. I’m not backing out on that!
Modern coding languages enable all sorts of attractive animations and dynamic content.
Don’t overdo it like a PowerPoint presentation where everything bounces and spins around, but a few of these crowd-pleasers could go a long way towards impressing your customers with your website.
Plugins, of course, make it easy to add elements like this too. Search for plugins with terms like “animated text” and “CSS3 animations.”
Update Your Business Website Out Of The Stone Age
I won’t lie, making a complex website is extremely difficult and takes quite a bit of work, even for developers with years of experience.
But you may not need a complex website. A simple, clean online landing page for your business is truly better than nothing—and better than something last updated five years ago.
If you’re not sure how to get started, check out our website design portfolio and feel free to get in touch. We’d be delighted to point you in the right direction or to discuss the opportunity to take care of your website for you.
