Website Development

Developing Your Marketing Cornerstone

Your website is the cornerstone on which all your marketing hangs. However you choose to approach your other marketing efforts, the result is to drive people to your website so they can get to know you and your business. That’s why you should treat your website as your home.

And, what better way to make your new U.S. customers feel at home than to be as welcoming as possible by providing them with a user-friendly, helpful experience?

In this guide, we’ll talk about how to achieve this goal through a winning combination of design, architecture, and content.

First Impressions Matter…

It only takes about 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) for a user to get a first impression of your website which will determine whether they like it enough to stay on it or leave.

That’s why it’s vital that your site is designed with fantastic aesthetics in mind. This means being easy to understand with design elements that are suitable for the type of business you are promoting and the audience you are trying to reach.

A website that’s poorly designed or doesn’t resonate with your target audience is going to struggle to capture that first piece of attention. But – and this is a big but – first impressions are only a fraction of the story.

…but So Do Deeper Impressions

Without excellent content on your website, beautiful design can be a little like creating a gorgeously proportioned house but filling it with junk. Initially, it will look lovely, but as people try to settle down and function in the house? It all falls apart.

Style over substance is a common problem for businesses that only focus on how a website looks. Poor-quality information and shallow content that doesn’t answer any of the customer’s questions are not going to keep them on the page for very long.

Neither is merely listing services and technical/operational business details. A great website needs to have content that hangs together coherently and anticipates your customer’s needs while offering them extra content that’s of real value to them. And, in a crowded U.S. market, this approach to developing your website is vital.

Combining Style and Substance With Exceptional Architecture

Of course, no home stands up to scrutiny if the foundations it’s built on are shoddy. That’s why it’s essential to develop a website that places excellent design and content within a robust framework. Your site needs to be geared towards usability for your customers. That means making sure it loads quickly and is fully mobile-ready – especially as 85% of adults think that when they view a company’s website on mobile, it should be as good, or better, than when viewed on a desktop.

Combining excellent architecture with design style and content substance is the basis for an effective website. But what can you do to build on those general principles in practice, and make sure that the way you choose to develop your website aligns with what your fresh U.S. audience wants?

Building Knockout Websites for an American Audience

At Mount Bonnell Media, we’ve put together a website that favors content, while taking into account how that content is packaged and how easy it is to navigate the site. While we want our website to be stylish, it matters far more to us that we are offering you as much useful information as we can to help you build your business in the U.S.

We’re excited to share what we know and our enthusiasm for working and living in the U.S. So, we have taken care to give you as many ways to discover more as possible – via guides, blogs, images, video, podcasting and more!

We can offer you the same multi-faceted service that we practice with our website for your web development.

Content and Copy – The Key to a Great Website

In today’s busy digital marketing sphere it’s tempting to think that the less writing you have for your potential customers to consider the better. After all, people have short attention spans and so need short, eye-catching copy, right?

Well, not entirely. Yes, it is true that American audiences are busier than ever and also have shorter attention spans. But grabbing attention is one thing, keeping it is quite another!

Knowing how to keep attention is a matter of how well you cater what you have to offer for your unique U.S. users. To do that, you need to know how to speak their language when it comes to your messages and information sharing.

Give Your Audience Deeper Content

It might be true that some people will only scan copy on your website – but these are not generally the people who have a deeper interest in what you have to offer. Those who do want to learn more want content that is useful and offers more than a quick look. And, they will take the time to engage with that content.

That’s why a website that provides thoughtful and helpful content that pre-empts possible questions and concerns will be more likely to get repeat visitors than one that merely briefly covers basics.

And, it matters how you provide that information. Authentically telling your unique story while delivering high-value copy is the key to getting your American audience to know, like and trust you – all vital parts of their journey towards becoming customers.

SEO and Content

Optimizing your copy for SEO is one of the main ways you will get your website seen. Without ranking on search engines, your website can’t showcase your business. We offer SEO services to get you ranking well on search engines. To find out more and discover recent developments in this arena please check out our page here.

On the whole, copy for blogs and articles that is shorter than 1000 words are generally not at all useful for SEO. That’s because Google quite rightly figures that if content is shorter than this, it’s not likely to have room to offer helpful information.

Your website also needs to be fully updated with effective metadata (like content descriptions, tags, and titles) so that search engines can easily find it.

Overall, your website should be populated with high-quality content that’s SEO optimized and talks to U.S. users in a way that creates trust and rapport.

Content That Gives Users a Reason to Come Back

It takes time to build relationships with your audience. Earning trust is not a one-time deal – most people will only feel familiar with your website (and therefore you) after a few visits. If your website is not updated with compelling content on a regular basis, they are far less likely to come back for a return visit.

Blogs are an excellent way to keep people returning for fresh content on your site. B2C companies that blog 11+ times a month get more than four times the amount of leads as those who blog only 4-5 times.

Blogs and articles should be informative and written with your user’s experience in mind. Company corporate updates or 500-word ‘filler’ posts are nowhere near as useful as offering niche information and an opportunity to start a conversation.

You should ensure your website development includes a great Content Management System (CMS) that allows you to easily add content.

A podcast series, a range of videos, or regular newsletters are additional ways that you can choose to keep your website continually evolving and offering more value to your users.

Always focus on how you can solve a problem for your audience, and whether you can do it engagingly. This helps to build authority and trust – and can help you to keep clarity about how you market your business.

Usability Is a Top Priority for American Visitors

Usability relates to both how useful your website is and how easy it is to use. Great content won’t make a dent if people can’t easily navigate to it.

Websites that are built with the right building blocks will ensure that you can place content where it will be seen. It’s also crucial that content reads well across all devices– whether they are tablets, smartphones or desktops.

Great responsive design for a website is technically flexible and can easily adapt to different devices and browsers.

Some website providers also enable smoother mobile use via their own apps.

This kind of responsiveness is only going to become more important as time goes on. Almost all Americans now own a cellphone of some sort (95%) and of these user’s, 77% own smartphones.

And, the number of “smartphone-only” internet users (meaning they don’t have traditional broadband at home)in America now stands at one in five. Websites that are not mobile-friendly will get left further and further behind as this trend continues.

Making Usability As Useful As Possible

It’s important that you’re able to figure out if your website is working as you intend. Tracking enabled websites are developed to allow you to examine performance indicators such as the traffic you get, your conversion rate and other goals.

You can also ensure your website is conversion optimized. This means developing a design that easily allows you to integrate campaign landing pages and lead magnets. You can then use this tool to add flexible landing pages according to the response you would like from your customer.

Strong security is a must – to protect both you and your user’s data.

Consistent Design for Consistent Results

Effective design takes into account your unique business and the way you want to present it to the world. Elements to consider include what color palette to use, whether your logo will work with your design, and what kind of images and graphics you want.

It’s important to keep your messaging consistent with your brand and ensure the look and feel is consistent and relevant throughout all pages of your website. And, you should ensure that your design is suitable for the people you want to connect with.

Mbm Web Development Process

Our aim at Mount Bonnell Media is to ensure your expansion into the U.S. is as effective as possible. We will help you to develop your website specifically for your American audience – using all the elements that make for a great website, while tailoring design, language and usability for your target users Stateside.

Our team includes U.S. designers, developers and business professionals who know the local market inside out and how to integrate design, imagery, language and other local expertise into a powerful website.

We have developed our own website using the principals and elements that are core to websites that put the user first. This is the approach we will take with you as we help you to develop your website for your U.S. expansion.