Marketing to women: web design
How one of our custom websites can help you increase sales
Our web design clients enjoy benefits ranging from pride in the way their companies are presented to web visitors to an easy, delightful experience during the web design process itself... and they also enjoy the potential for increased revenues.
Buying power surprising stats
A full 63% of consumers turn to the internet first for information about local companies, with 82% of those using search engines like Google. (Source: 2008-09 survey by Webvisible and Nielsen)
When they find you, will your website convince them to do business with you?
Here are some ways we actively seek to build the bottom line for our clients:
Appealing to the nation's most powerful customer
We're one of the few graphic and web design firms in the nation that specialize specifically in marketing to affluent women. Compared to female customers, believe it or not, men are a niche market (men are responsible for only 15% of purchase decisions on average)... and yet women feel misunderstood by marketers in a host of industries. The opportunity for you here is huge.
Get your foot in the door.
Our highly unique web design work has literally opened the doors of hard-to-crack accounts for our clients, who were greeted with smiles of welcome and then able to win the business. Our goal for the websites we design for our clients—in fact, for all the marketing pieces we develop—is to position our clients so that prospects are already interested, excited, and predisposed to do business with our clients... before even talking with them! It's "pull" marketing at its best, rather than "push" selling.
Stop the revolving door.
The wrong website design will drive profitable female customers away from your website. Every visitor who clicks away is a potential sale lost! We'll help you keep women visitors on your website and convince them to buy.
Boost your credibility.
Many website visitors hesitate to buy online or contact firms they haven't done business with before. If your competitor's website seems more credible, convincing, and safe, they're likely to get the business. We'll help you get the business by building you a world-class website and implementing a score of strategies to both build your credibility and appeal to your target markets.
(Before we even begin designing for you, we research the best websites in your industry to identify opportunities that haven't been addressed and ensure you rise above the rest. Our websites are also based on solid research and best practices in marketing.)
Command higher prices.
"There is actually one thing better than a buyer impressed by you and respecting you on sight, and that is the buyer impressed by you and respecting you before ever laying eyes on you," writes Alan Weiss in Value Based Fees. "Effective branding actually creates fee 'buoyancy.'"
You can command higher prices if you provide more value, if you can prove that you do, and, as importantly, if you look like you're worth your fees. Fairly or not, in the mind of your prospect, there's a disconnect between someone says she's successful in her field but drives a Pinto... or whose company's branding and marketing is less than professional. We'll make sure your branding and marketing isn't just professional, it's outstanding.
Free your schedule.
You make more money when you operate in your area of expertise. Delegating your website to us frees you up to do what you do best... and lets us to do what we do best for you. Hiring us ensures your marketing won't be put on hold until you have more time; you'll always be putting your best face forward for customers to see.
Increase your pride.
We also seek to increase your pride (and that of your staff) in your business. Your sales staff will be far happier to direct a prospect to your website if it's state-of-the-art and perfectly reflects your business than if they feel they need to apologize for it... and so will you.
At the start, before a customer considers doing business with you, the way your company is presented can be critically important, something that real estate magnate Donald Trump recognizes as of tangible value, noting that subjective outcomes can matter just as much—a beautiful building versus an ugly one, a strong reputation versus a lousy one—in his industry and elsewhere.
Contact us today and let's get started!
How we're different from other web design firms
We're one of the few web design firms in the nation that specializes in marketing specifically to women—one of the most profitable markets in the United States—and specifically in marketing to affluent women.
A handful of experts—Marti Barletta, Andrea Learned, Holly Buchanan, Bridget Brennan, and Paco Underhill among them—specialize in marketing to women. But while they research women's buying practices and consult with companies who want to reach that profitable market, we actually do the work. We take their findings and build the best into your website. In other words, where they're strategic, we're tactical... and we're one of the few web design companies with this specialty that works with a wide range of businesses, from small businesses to Fortune 500 firms.
We're also a certified 100% woman-owned, women-staffed company. Why does that matter? Put simply, women are likely to catch gender nuances that even the most well-trained, well-educated men won't... and women are far less likely to create the unwelcome nuances that turn off other women in the first place. (Similarly, shopping behavior specialist Paco Underhill quickly gets to the heart of the matter: "[F]emales trust other females more." No offense to male marketers is intended... note that Paco himself is male.) Yet female web designers are decidedly in the minority; a 2009 survey found only 17.4% of web designers are women.
Why a first-class business website is crucial to your success
Michael Mendenall, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at HP, perhaps says it most succinctly. "The era of brands being built solely with a traditional 15, 30, and/or 60 second TV spot is dead. Brands today are now being built in the digital net space," he writes in his foreward to Mom 3.0.
Years ago, our founder used to tell entrepreneurs at our advertising courses that marketing on the internet was less critical to the success of firms in certain word-of-mouth industries: home inspectors, for instance. Today, that's no longer the case.
A full 63% of consumers turn to the internet first for information about local companies, according to a survey conducted in November 2008 and February 2009 by Webvisible and Nielsen, with 82% of those using search engines like Google—far above the remaining contenders: the Yellow Pages (57%), local newspapers (53%), the online Yellow Pages (49%), television (49%), direct mail (38%), and the White Pages (32%).
And slightly more consumers trust a company's website than they trust editorial content in the media, according to a joint study of more than 800,000 Facebook users by Nielsen and Facebook published in MediaPost's Research Brief. According to the study, 90% of respondents trust recommendations from people they know, 70% trust consumer opinions posted online, 70% trust brand websites, and 69% trust editorial content... surprising results, since editorial content has long been considered a benchmark of trust.
If your target market includes affluent consumers, an outstanding website is even more important since the affluents' ranks continue to swell. Internet research firm eMarketer predicts that the number of affluent web users will grow to 57.1 million in 2011, up from 43.7 million in 2006. And in July 2008, the Luxury Institute announced the results of a poll of affluent Americans with annual incomes of $150,000 or more. A full 64% of these well-to-do consumers said they go to company websites for information on luxury goods and services—a higher ranking than those who rely on recommendations of friends and family (57% of respondents).
Yet only 44% of small businesses have a website and half of these spend less than 10% of their marketing budget online, according to the Webvisible/Nielsen survey. Those respondents who do have a website are generally not happy with it: 51% say the quality and ability of their website to acquire new customers is "fair" or "poor," and only 9% are satisfied with their online marketing efforts.
(If you're a small business, what should you consider in terms of a website? Can you get away with a free website template? The answer: it depends. Click here for the most important questions to ask yourself.)
Why outstanding visual design is no longer optional
For millenia, visual design has been considered something nice to have, providing a rather optional pleasure to a highly visual human race.
Now it's essential to the success of your business... and we're not kidding. If you've been tempted to skimp on web design in favor of other aspects of your business, read on for a statistic that has curled the hair of more than one entrepreneur.
"[P]eople landing on a site for the first time make instant subconscious judgments about the organization behind it based on the design of the site," says Lance Loveday, co-author of Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers and Prospects Into Leads, in an April 2009 blog post. "I’ve referenced a study done by researchers at Carleton University before about how people begin to react to new interfaces in as little as 0.5 seconds. ... New visitors to a site form initial judgments based on the design quality of the site—use of color and images, layout alignment, affordance, use of negative space, and many other factors. Having participated in a number of user studies, I’ve always come away amazed at how people form judgments about a site based on such limited information."
In today's online world, where the next website is only one or two clicks away, strategic website design—a visual design that appeals strongly to your company's target market(s)—plays a critical business role.
Where once it was said that "content is king", design is now the gatekeeper. Visitors will click away if what they see in terms of visual design, intuitive navigation, and usability are not what they expect to see. They won't even get to the text.
And now, a website's visual design itself is playing a key role in effective search engine optimization. Google's new Instant Previews feature, which has increased the satisfaction of users by 5%, thrusts a website's design into the search spotlight, too. Today, visitors may not click on a search result if the preview of the website isn't to their liking, contributing to a decrease in the rank of the affected website
What about social media?
But, you protest, social media (like Facebook and Twitter) is all the rage in the news these days. Isn't that where I should be focusing my efforts?
The answer is yes, definitely... but definitely not to the exclusion of your company website.
Never forget that while social media is a place to interact with your customers and promote your business in an indirect way, your website is where business gets done: it’s where you deliver your buying argument and sell your products. Ideally, it's also where potential customers can find information about your products or services most efficiently, leading them that much closer to a buying decision.
A February 2010 Marketing:Travel article puts its another way. "These days, it's hard to avoid all the messages insisting brands must be active in social media. … And they're not wrong. But we have to remember the bigger picture. Social media channels are an invitation you extend to prospective customers to engage with your brand. An invitation, if you will, to a party," Beth Freedman writes. " Your website is where the party is at. It's the house your brand built. Unfortunately, having been distracted by all the new, shiny social media toys, many of us have let our homes get a little shabby. But if you are engaging the social media channels correctly, you are likely increasing your brand site traffic. Which means it's time to take a fresh look at your brand website… Forrester recently published that 77% of marketers plan to move TV dollars to social media in 2010. And 73% are shifting more money to online advertising. So do your brand a favor. Take some of that money and put it into the house you're inviting everyone to enter."
Don't go to all the trouble to woo customers to your website, only to lose them in the first few seconds... which is much more common than you might expect.
Our custom web design services
When it comes to custom website design, Jan Zimmerman, author of Web Marketing for Dummies, points out that a web designer is only one of several professionals you'll need; you may also need a graphic designer, web programmer, copywriter (preferably one trained in writing search-engine-optimized text, we would add), advertising and online marketing specialist, and others.
Sound overwhelming? Take heart: we offer expertise in every one of those areas. You need make only one contact: us.
We design web pages to appeal to your target market according to your firm's unique branding, strengths, opportunities, and industry. The best website design for you will be markedly different than what's best for the firm down the street. What we offer is truly custom: your website will not look like any other site on the internet. Take a quick look at our design portfolio to see what we mean; every web design and marketing piece is upscale, created specifically to appeal to affluent women consumers, but each one is inseparable from the personality of the firm.
We do all of this well and quickly, with a level of personal service seldom found in the web design industry. (See what our web design clients are saying about working with us!) You'll never have to wonder about the status of your web design or hesitate to ask questions. We'll guide you in other areas of online marketing, too. If you want to feel you're safely in the hands of caring, expert marketing and design professionals, we're your web design company.
We take your vision and create what other people see when they look at your company. And we make it appealing to affluent women customers, among the most influential and powerful consumers in the US today. Contact us today and let's talk about how you want to present your company to the world!
