Web Design/Development Highly Underrated in Marketing Today
A big trend in digital marketing has been the Facebook push of social media and Google’s enforcement of high priced search ads.
They’ve been able to capture hundreds of billions in revenue, through this monopolistic engineering so they’re not disturbed that natural, authentic marketing processes have been short circuited.
Over the years, they’ve been able to disable the free but earned, organic messaging that companies used on their own company websites. They’ve reduced organic visibility for small businesses every year. And they’ve replaced that click traffic with paid media messaging from ads to landing pages. The excessiveness of their strategy has created injury to small to medium-sized companies. Combine that with inflation and the pressure is on SMB owners to stay viable.
Facebook and Google’s ultimate goal is to reduce the importance of websites and traffic to them.
The issue for travel agencies, small software companies and real estate agents is diminished reach to consumers. That leads to neglect of this key, foundational asset. In this post, we look at the losses and how to turn it around.
Countering the Trend to Neglect
With lower reach in Bing/Google search results, many business owners lose confidence in their ability to make the search channel work. Many won’t spend on design, user-friendly features, AI enhancements, or content strategy.
Additionally, there‘s confusion about what a website can and should deliver. For a real estate agent as an example, it may seem like a Facebook or Instagram page is all that’s needed to generate leads. But META isn’t giving away anything for free. Social media ads are expensive and the conversion rates aren’t great – because ads are so poorly targeted.
With META sites specifically, the issue might be trust, credibility, and respect. And there’s a loss of brand too. If the medium is the message as Marshall McLuhan once said, then consider these two problems:
- you’re on someone else’s domain: message — you are not the master of your domain.
- their branding is more important than your own: message — you’re just like all the other companies on there hosted on their brand.
The Brand Erosion Never Stops
Further to that, is the real delivered message of social posts about what your business is. The nature of social media posts which can’t be escaped from — is superficiality. There is almost no way to command true respect on a social platform. The frivolity, silliness, reactions, and controversy. It’s not so good for your brand to get near all of that or be pulled into a controversy.
Those using social media, and trying to convey trust/authority amidst a bunch of quirky, clickbait postings, find the low cred tinge of these social channels reducing their impact. The more you sink into social media, the more you come across as part of the crowd, more superficial and perhaps irrelevant in a sea of sameness.
Companies actually need their connections to visit their website every once in a while to give them a credibility boost (some protein in their diet).
Your Website: a Distinctive Brand and Visitor Experience
Back to websites, their style, layout, imagery and text content can be made distinctive. They establish a unique message and communicate a personalized, UVP differentiation well. Social sites don’t allow that kind of “only provider for me” differentiation that attracts long-time loyal customers. Everyone’s social media account looks and sounds the same, controlled by feeds and post layouts. It’s frustrating for marketers to communicate well and not have their messages tainted or skewed by what viewers have been consuming. This can alter how they feel about your brand.
When advertisers refuse to show their ads on some posts/pages, it shows how brands are impacted by being near bad things.
To establish a personalized UVP and selling offer, create a meaningful conversation, and a compelling customer journey, you need to craft a seamless content experience. The website design supports that pathway.
Powerful Vessels for Content Strategy and Branding
A high-quality website is more than a digital storefront; it’s a powerful tool for branding and content strategy that helps small businesses communicate their competitive value proposition effectively (especially if you intend to reach and serve international markets).
Given travel companies and software development companies sell to international audiences, it’s vitally important companies prepare a content experience for each audience type. Traveler types is a great example of that. If your prospective customers are mostly from the UK, Colorado or Japan, you should have visual content experiences specially prepared for them. It will raise engagement and leads.
And in terms of business functionality, social sites will not suffice. Real business transactions must flow from your website whether an online purchase, form inquiry, or a phone call. You may collect leads straight from social sites, but they’ll need to converted via your company website.
And the visual style of your site and its tone of voice must suit your ideal audiences. It’s all about reaching and persuading your ideal prospects. They might be the only ones you’re going to convert. For instance, a blog like mine should be functional but not too slick. This conveys ambition under control and that I’m only looking for a few dedicated clients. If it was too slick, it would make me appear ambitious thus not dedicated to current clients. An understated blog shows I’m less concerned about my business leads on masse, and more focused on my clients instead.
A web designer knows the website is the customer’s brand experience and showcases the company’s UVP. It delivers clarity of branding for visitors so they “feel” the resonance with your company. They get the vibes they’re looking for. Vibes are the emotional signal that represents expected satisfaction.
Before we put too much pressure on Web designers to produce the ultimate online branded experience, let’s go over 12 benefits we’re striving for. This will improve your collaboration with them.
The 12 Essentials of Great Web Design
If we want clarity about the full power and design of a website, with need to look at 12 key objectives, purposes or benefits it could deliver:
- Establishes a Strong Brand Identity
A professionally designed website communicates the value/quality of your brand identity. It ensures your logo, color palette, typography, and visual elements will convey your distinct value proposition. Designers/developers ensure visual components are consistently applied, creating a cohesive, effective and memorable brand experience regardless of which screen device visitors use. This impeccable visual quality and consistency builds recognition and trust, which is especially important for international customers who may be entirely unfamiliar with your company.
This visual branding is made consistent with the UVP so that visuals will support the messaging.
- Communicates Your Brand Story Well
Your website is the perfect platform to tell your brand story. It doesn’t just try to communicate your brand, it has to do it well. Which is why a website design template might not be a good idea.
Through strategic content placement—such as the “About Us” page, mission statements, customer testimonials, experiences, and blog storytelling elements—you can convey your values, history, and unique selling points in a powerful way. This helps humanize your brand and help you connect emotionally with your audience.
Stories and benefits may not be as enjoyable to visitors if the visual branding isn’t clean, pleasing and resonant. You can see how a confusing, irrelevant set of images, symbols, and click streams erode the clarity of message you need to have.
- Enhances Content Strategy Execution
A high-quality website serves as the vessel for your content strategy. It allows you to organize and present relevant content—such as blogs, case studies, videos, and infographics—in a way that aligns with your brand messaging and engages your target audience. This content can educate, inform, and persuade potential customers, positioning your business as an authority in your industry.
Travel businesses for instance, should use photos, video, color, illustrations and more to paint a classy, elegant and pleasing pre-travel experience. Making your content quickly scannable is a great way to increases engagement and reduces quick exits.
- Builds Trust and Credibility
Trust is critical for international customers. A well-designed website with professional visuals, clear contact information, and customer testimonials reinforces your credibility. If web design is about appearances, then its the appearance of trust that’s critical. Customers draw subtle but powerful conclusions about your trustworthiness and reliability from the website itself – and sometimes it might create friction or even defeat the content strategy.
Including trust signals like key topics masterfully covered to convey authority, customer successes, clear presentations of who you are and what you do, along with certifications, industry awards, and security badges can help enhance your brand’s authenticity.
Just be aware that your website carries a strong unconscious message about your company – such that they don’t need to read to feel trust in you. Contrast that with an outdated, broken site and what that says about whether you can be trusted.
- Supports Multilingual and Localized Content
For businesses exporting to other countries, such as travel agencies and software firms, a website can be tailored to support multilingual content and localization. This demonstrates cultural respect and makes your brand more accessible to global audiences. A localized content strategy ensures that your messaging resonates with customers in different regions, improving engagement and conversion rates.
- Optimizes User Experience (UX) for Brand Alignment
A high-quality website isn’t just functional—it’s designed to reflect your brand’s personality. From intuitive navigation to visually appealing layouts, every element of the user experience should align with your brand identity. A positive UX reinforces your brand’s professionalism and commitment to customer satisfaction. Each visual seen or button clicked is a branding event.
- Drives SEO and Content Discoverability
Your website is the backbone of your SEO content strategy. By researching and planning great content, i.e., your blog, you can then design the visual delivery of it via your website navigation system. Search engines like Bing and Google don’t necessarily understand your website experience or the text meanings it contains. Great design is sensitive to a search engine’s need for text-based clues about your content. Also developers work to ensure your site doesn’t load too slowly which is a very common issue for search engine rankings and traffic.
- Showcases Social Proof and Brand Advocacy
Customer reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful tools for building trust and reinforcing your brand’s value proposition. Displaying this social proof on your website helps prospective customers see the real-world impact of your products or services, encouraging them to choose your brand over competitors.
- Enables Consistent Brand Messaging Across Channels
Your website acts as the anchor for your brand messaging. By maintaining a consistent tone, voice, and visual style across your website, social media, and other marketing channels, you create a unified brand experience. This consistency strengthens your brand’s identity and makes it more recognizable and trusted.
- Facilitates Content Personalization
Advanced web design allows for personalized content delivery, such as tailored product presentation, recommendation engine or making localized offers easy to see. Content personalization enhances the customer experience and makes your brand feel more relevant and attentive to individual needs, which is especially important for international audiences.
For instance, with a travel agency, each audience has its own cultural views and expectations. The more your content can flex to fit their perceptions, the better.
- Provides a Platform for Thought Leadership
Your website is the ideal place to showcase your expertise through thought leadership content. By publishing blogs, whitepapers, and industry insights, you position your brand as a credible, trusted authority. Credibility, trust and likeability are the 3 pillars of assurance.
For any industry or sector, there is a need for advice or insight. When your company/staff/marketers achieve trusted authority status, visitors will relax more and your brand messaging will make a greater impact. That increases engagement and opens the door to fulfilling their purchase intent.
- Delivers Measurable Insights for Brand and Content Optimization
A well-developed website the uses advanced user/content tracking to help you understand visitor’s responses, behavior, engagement, fulfillment and conversions. These content pathway insights allow you to refine your branding and content strategy over time. For example, you can identify which content resonates most with your distant travel audience and adjust your messaging and content strategy accordingly to continuously improve impact and sales.
Why Branding and Content Strategy Matter for Small Businesses Exporting Globally
For small businesses exporting products, experiences or services to other countries, a website is often the first point of contact with potential customers.
Unlike social media or paid ads, a website provides the space and flexibility to communicate your brand’s unique value proposition in depth. It allows you to combine branding (visual identity, storytelling, and trust-building) with content strategy (educational, engaging, and localized content) to create a compelling and customer-friendly experience.
By investing in high-quality web design and development, you ensure that your brand stands out in a competitive global market. A well-crafted website not only communicates your value proposition but also builds the authenticity, trust, and transparency that today’s customers demand.
It’s important to know that not all web design agencies have this complete view of web design. But if you know this ahead of time, you can work with them, communicating well, to achieve the best results from whatever budget you have.
It’s important to avoid overcommitting your web development budget to elements that don’t contribute to sales success. For each of the elements above you’ll want to prioritize those that both give you more leads and help boost your brand image.
Web design is a communication of your brand’s personalized, unique value proposition. If that’s not conveyed well, your promotions or selling offers may not work.
Contact me about travel content strategy and advanced SEO services, and travel marketing services.
Title graphic courtesy of Freepik.
