It can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to your funeral home’s website design. A strong website design not only helps your clients navigate and engage with you through your website, but it should also assist in driving traffic to your website. If your website isn't properly designed, it could not only be causing you to have less traffic, but it could also be driving new clients away. By having an optimized website design, you can get a leg up on your competitors in the online marketplace. In this article, we will cover five of the most important factors you should consider when trying to professionally design your website.
1. Easy Access to Important Information
One of the first things to ask yourself is “What will be the most important information that anyone who visits my funeral home’s website be looking for?”. People who are looking at a new website will not spend a lot of time there if you don't tell them what they want to know right away. Information such as your company’s name and contact information should be easily visible right away without having to go through any menus.
2. Layout Matters
The layout of your website is extremely important to consider when designing your website. Research has shown websites that consist of one long continuous page which clients can scroll through and see all of the information they need are more effective than websites where people have to go through menus.
3. Consider Load Times
Around 40% of people have said that they will click away from a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. That is why, when in the design process, it is critical to consider website performance and the many ways that you could unintentionally be slowing it down. Things such as automatically playing videos or even an album of pictures could be influencing a visitor’s experience of your funeral homes website. Studies have shown that even if you have an album of pictures, visitors of your website will only click the first picture the vast majority of the time.
4. The Growing Presence of Mobile
Research has shown that over 50% of all website traffic these days comes from mobile devices, this includes funeral home websites as well. Therefore, having a website that is designed to perform optimally on mobile devices is becoming an increasingly critical part of a properly designed website.
5. Keywords are Key
So now that you have a website that functions well when the clients are on it, the question remains “How do I generate more traffic to my website?”. Good news! Website design plays a role in how well it performs within search engine results. Filling a properly designed websites with keywords is just one way to improve its search engine optimization.
If this all seems a bit daunting, have no fear, there are resources out there that are willing to help you out with your funeral home’s website design. One way to get started is to run a free website performance test to get a better understanding of how your website currently operates. You can find a resource at the end of this article that will complete one of these free tests for you. Another option is to go to an expert and see if they would be willing to perform a website optimization analysis for you in order to help you make the best choices that will optimize both new and prospective client experiences, as well as assisting with your performance in the competitive world of search engine optimization.
