Small businesses can have a big impact. New businesses can have an immediate presence. In order to achieve both success and impact, however, the smallest and newest companies have to find a way to be both noticed and successful. Whether you are a small clothing and gift boutique with a brick and mortar location or you are an expanding outdoor landscaping company that does not even have a showroom, the best use of website design, internet marketing, and strong graphic design can help you reach your goals.
Today’s consumer is accustomed to researching online before they make many purchase decisions. When they have specific questions, however, these potential customers want to find immediate answers. And while some questions require person to person phone calls, many answers are easily answered by a well designed and easy to navigate web design. The best graphic designs, in fact, easily transfer from a strong online presence to the need for any desired printing services.
Consider some of this research about the impact of web design, graphic design, and search engine optimization:
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- Statistics indicate that 80% of consumers conduct local searches on search engines, 88% of these are on smartphones, while 84% are on computers or tablets. The need for a website to adapt to different platforms is essential.
- Today, print is one of the largest industries in the world. In fact, print competes well with auto-manufacturing and is more than eight times bigger than the video game industry. As a result, strong graphic design needs to look great both on the screen and on paper.
- Real numbers count and one of the most important numbers in today’s digital marketing world is the amount of content that websites post. The average word count on pages in the top 10 search results increased significantly between the years 2014 and 2015. Increasing by 25%, this number went from 975 in 2014 to 1,285 in 2015.
- One intriguing statistic is that 33% of smartphone searches are made right before a store visit. Whether these searches are for store location and directions or for a specific product, these searches clearly drive customers to businesses.
- Nearly 80% of households read or browse advertising mail, products that rely on strong graphic design.
- Given 15 minutes to focus on content, 66% of people would rather read something beautifully designed than something that is visually plain.
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- Do you base your shopping decisions on visual content that catches your attention?
- Everyone has personal preferences, but strong graphic design can attract a variety of customers who have a variety of tastes and preferences.
- Small business competition is intense. Make sure that your digital presence gives you the edge.
- In the year 2007, 10.6 million American jobs depended on advertising mail, an industry dependent on strong design elements.
- Generating leads, as cited by 61% of corporate marketers, was one of the top SEO objectives for marketers at enterprise companies in 2015.
- New web site traffic, as cited by 57% of corporate marketers, was another one of the top SEO objectives for marketers at enterprise companies in 2015.
- Estimates indicate that 39% of people will stop engaging with a website if images do not load or take too long to load.
- Letter sized simplex pages are still very popular, even in this digital age. In fact, 8.5 trillion of these are printed every year in North America.
- Everyone expects digital content to be easy to navigate, and they expect it to be fast as well. If your website does not meet these two key requirements, you are likely not having the success you need.
- Mental images stick. Make sure that your graphics are powerful.
- Estimates also indicate that 72% of marketers worldwide said relevant content creation was the most effective SEO strategy, according to a June 2015 report from Ascend2.
- Nearly 57% of customers indicate that they will not recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. Additionally, 40% have turned to a competitor?s site after a single bad experience.
- Trends in digital marketing indicate that organic search drives 51% of all visitors to both B2B and and B2C web sites. On the other end paid-search drives 10% (and social 5%, on average).
- SEO companies can help companies of all sizes make the most of their digital marketing budgets, efforts, and brand exposure.
