Two Types of Web Design

There are two basic types of web designs today: a brochure website and a search engine optimized (SEO) website.

Brochure Web Design

A brochure web design is the simplest type of website and provides an online presence for your business. It is essentially an online version of a business card. This can be one page or a few short pages to explain your hours and contact information. Brochure websites are built to give your company an online presence and to provide information to people who already know about your business.

Brochure websites are inexpensive and are not built to help new customers find you. Years ago, when websites were first introduced, they were all simple, brochure style websites. As the Internet and Google evolved, websites became more complex and important.

Optimized Websites

An optimized web design is a website that is built to be found on search engines. This website is more expensive to build initially and typically consists of several pages. Unlike a brochure website, there is extensive research and precise construction of the layout and the content within it. An optimized website requires keyword research, quality content, regular updates, and specific technical aspects.

Keyword Research

The research involves testing the SEO value of the keywords to use in the page titles, subtitles, and the copy text on each page. This requires sophisticated online applications and professional experience/knowledge to perform.

Quality Content

It has become extremely important to produce and publish quality website content. When savvy marketers realized Google and other browsers were impressed by high content posting, thousands of writing companies popped up. Now, you must produce content that is accurate, useful, and unique to impress the search engines.

Regular Updates

Google and other search engines judge your website’s authority on your “activity” online. They look who is regularly creating and posting online content such as blogs, videos, social content, etc. The browsers favor and reward higher search engine positions to those companies who are actively and regularly posting.

Technical Requirements

While brochure and optimized web designs both require technical applications, to be an effective SEO website there several important technical aspects that must be in place such as mobile responsive coding and page load times.

What type of website is best for your business?

To determine what type of web design is best for your business, you first need to look at your goals. If your competition is low, but you want a vehicle to tell your story, or maintain your brand and let visitors know how they can get in touch with you, a brochure website can do just that. But, it won’t go far in engaging visitors and driving more business. Therefore, if you do have many competitors, and your objective is to build a website to find and engage customers, you must create a more robust, optimized website and maintain an ongoing SEO program every month.

Your search engine rankings are important because 67.6% of people will only click on websites listed within the top 5. So if you need new customers to consider you, you must be within the top 3-5 websites listed.

While these are two extremes of websites, there are many options in between as well. To find out what web design is best for your business, contact Red Crow Marketing in Springfield, Missouri today to schedule a meeting.