Web Design Scottsdale, AZ – How to Effectively Leverage Your Online Presence

Looking for a Professional Scottsdale Web Design Firm to Update Your Business Site? We’ve Got You Covered – Your Complete Guide on What You’ll Need to Know

Hiring a web design firm in the Scottsdale, AZ area can be overwhelming at first. You’re a busy business owner or marketing executive and you want to ensure that you get this hiring decision right the first time. The last thing that you want is a frustrating contractor making your life more complicated.

This post is your comprehensive guide, leveraging our experience working with clients in this space for years, on exactly all of the information that you’ll need to make this important decision for the future of your business.

We will cover everything from if you should even hire a firm to complete your website for you (it’s definitely not a right fit for all businesses out there), to how to properly vet the web design firms you’re speaking with, to some important aspects to look for and demand with the structure of your website, how the content should be written and whose responsibility it is to create that content and finally essential digital tools and elements on your new website that are must haves.

As always, if you have any questions at all or are interested in a free web design audit, reach out to us now and we will highlight exactly what you’re doing great and what needs to be improved to get your business the results you deserve. Select the contact us button link on the top menu or feel free to reach us directly here:

Email: [email protected]
Phone: (973) 922-0049

When Should You Hire a Web Design Firm to Update Your Website?

Start here – have you ever asked the question if you need to hire a professional web design firm for your Scottsdale or Phoenix, AZ business? We posted another article (link included here) specifically about when it may make sense for your business to use a simple and inexpensive website building platform such as Squarespace or Wix.

Some things to consider – how much free time do you realistically have to work on your business website and what would the return look like if you did decide to work with a professional web design firm?

The main reason why businesses reach out to us and other web design firms in this area is that they think the website looks old and outdated and they are too busy and aren’t really sure what they’re doing to update it themselves.

The honest truth that is rare to hear from a web design business is that not every single business needs to spend a huge budget to create a customized website.

At our firm, Norba Design, we take a deep dive into your unique business situation and only work with a select number of clients per month where it makes sense for both parties to work together on a customized online marketing solution.

It should absolutely be a warning sign if a business is acting pushy and tells you it never makes sense to go with a cheaper option such as Squarespace or Wix (depending on your situation).

Now that we’ve established that key distinction, when does it make sense to invest in a customized website?

Let’s take a look at the potential return for two example businesses. Business A is a small local coffee shop. As a new customer acquisition to them may lead to maybe $3-4 in revenue, and they can only serve so many customers at a time, it makes much more sense for them to go with a cheaper alternative.

Business B is a construction company where when they land a new deal it would equate to 6-7 figures in revenue for the business. The market is saturated and their prospective customers carefully analyze how the businesses are portrayed from their online presence.

The return of getting a professional website that converts well is so much larger for the construction company, they can’t afford to get it wrong the first time.

What Should You Demand From Your Web Design Firm and How It Impacts the Results Your Website Will Get

Most web design businesses out there believe they are just building a website for their clients. If that’s all a company views it as then that’s all it amounts to. We do things differently at Norba Design.

We leverage your updated website to act as a sales system for your business that sells for you 24/7/365. Not only does it sell for you, but it also builds trust between you and potential clients.

There’s a big difference between building a website and building trust. What does this mean for you and your business website project?

Strategy, structure and the actual content can be leveraged to inspire visitors to reach out if done the right way.

We don’t fret about the fonts, the color schemes or the graphics we are going to put on the website – we do an in-depth dive into your unique business situation to see exactly what your potential clients are looking for. What headaches and doubt can you remove from your potential clients when they land on your page? What common frustrations does your potential client deal with when searching and shopping for your product/service? Why should your client trust you, how can you put their mind at ease (certifications, awards, featured publications, testimonials, etc.)?

As you can see, there are web design firms and then there are strategic marketing firms that leverage the potential of your online presence to work for you and your business.

Using Your Business Website as a Sales System – What Are the Main Goals of Your Web Design Firm Building the Site?

This is another area that is often overlooked by other web design firms. Keep it simple, if you could choose an ideal scenario for every website visitor what would it be?

Let’s use an example of a financial services firm based in New York City. Here are some bullets of the sales system and buyer journey they’d like to see:

Their qualified lead (age, income level, retirement status, etc.) searches for a keyword their website is ranking on the 1^st page for (utilizing SEO strategies) such as “best financial advisor NYC”
The lead clicks on their page and immediately gets a sense of this firm’s professionalism and experience from the intro website section.
The main call to action catches the lead’s attention and they click a link or a button. Let’s say it’s a “Learn More” button that leads to this firm’s competitive advantage.
The lead goes through the sales system and learns about the competitive advantage, why this business is an expert in their field, how many happy customers they’ve helped, and most importantly – it’s clear and obvious how they should reach out (emailing, calling, filling out a contact form, etc).

Most web designers craft a website structure and create the content based on what they’d like to hear. This is completely wrong, you need to get into the minds of the target client – what keeps them up at night, have they been burned in the past by another firm providing similar products/services, etc.

Once again, there’s building a website and then there’s building a carefully-crafted sales system. At Norba Design, we do things differently and help you build trust with your online presence.

Essentials For Your Website – Don’t Work on a New Project Without Ensuring Your Web Design Firm Is Incorporating These

Whether you decide to work with a professional web design firm or to do it yourself, the following tools are absolute essentials to add on to your website to get the most out of it:

Google Analytics
1. This is a must have for any business website. This free tool provides detailed results of how many visitors are landing on your website, where your website visitors are located, how long they stay on the page, and how the engagement is overall. Anyone with even small amounts of web design experience can set this up.
Google Search Console – Free Tool
1. This is another free Google tool that expands and links in with Google Analytics. What this will do is provide key metrics around what your visitors searched in Google to find your business. This can greatly help with search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns to see what is working and what isn’t. If you’d like to learn more about SEO, we posted an article here that gives you a brief overview.
GT Metrix – Free Tool
1. Simply copy and paste your website link and this will provide a detailed report for how quickly your site is loading and any potential speed errors that can be resolved. Don’t let your web design firm take shortcuts – demand good scores here. The general rule of thumb is that any website loading longer than 4 seconds is unacceptable and anything under 2 seconds is going to help with SEO rankings.
The Functionality to Create Blog Posts/Articles
1. Posting great content on a consistent basis (once every week or two) is going to not only help increase views on your website and with SEO rankings, but it also will position your brand as an expert authority figure. Let’s say you’re a financial advisor, think about common questions and challenges you’ve seen and write a blog post addressing that directly. This could be something like “How Much Money Do I Need for Retirement?”
SSL Certificate – Free and Paid Options
1. Simply type in your website into Google Chrome and if you an obnoxious “NOT SECURE”, then reach out to your web design firm and request they set up an SSL certificate for your site. Starting in July of 2018, Google began punishing websites (in SEO rankings) if they did not have a secure connection with an SSL certificate. This can be set up for free with services such as “CloudFlare”.
Google’s Mobile Friendly Tester – Free Tool
1. This is another free tool that simply analyzes your current website and tells you if it’s optimized for mobile browsers and devices. The data is clear – more and more individuals are browsing the internet with tablets and mobile phones and if your website is not mobile friendly, Google will punish your website rankings.

Note: These are the top essential additions to a website that we’ve experienced after working with countless business owners, but there are plenty of additional tools that can be highly effective.

Especially as you get into other areas of updating your digital presence and working to provide an excellent user experience for your website visitors (such as outsourcing SEO, social media marketing, pay per click digital advertising such as Google and Facebook ads, email marketing, etc.). Reach out now and we can take a look at your unique business situation and provide an additional list of recommended tools that we know would add tremendous value.

Conclusion

We’ve all had the experience of feeling like we’re being ripped off or that someone is being lazy, but how can we be sure if we don’t have all of the information or really know the industry well?

How can you really trust the auto repair shop telling you that you’ll need an expensive $2,000 repair for what you thought was just a simple problem? How would you be able to know if the salesman being paid commission actually had your best interest at heart? The answer is that you have the knowledge that empowers you to make an informed decision. We know that you will feel much more confident after reading through this article around how to make the right decision for your business website.

Updating or building a new website from scratch is an important decision for the future of your business. Get it right the first time and reach out now if you have any questions at all about the information we’ve provided here. Chances are, success is closer than you think – reach out now and let’s get started.