1. The company needs to determine the need for a product through consumer research and by observing and quantifying sales patterns of similar goods in the market place.
2. Make sure to modify the existing products or creating new products to fulfill all the consumer wants and needs.
3. Finding out and determining how the best way to reach potential customers is and to make them aware of your products and to persuade them to buy them.
4. Create marketing campaigns based on your findings in the most effective way of reaching customers.
5. Developing customer relationships via follow-up sales campaigns and loyalty programs and offering special offers or deals to the loyal customers.

Marketing is extremely helpful in the transfer, exchange and movement of goods and services. Goods and services can be and are made available to customers through various intermediaries like wholesalers and retailers etc. It is helpful to both producers and consumers as it helps producers increase their sales and it gives consumers an idea of all the available products.

In today’s world everything is done through a screen. Hence marketing also needs to step up to these changing times. This is where digital marketing comes in from. Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using different digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other possible digital medium. Digital marketing methods such as search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, e–books, and optical disks and games are becoming more common with advancements in technology. In fact, digital marketing is now extending to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as mobile phones (SMS and MMS), callback, and on-hold mobile ring tones.

The most common and versatile method of doing successful digital marketing is by making a website. Thus it is crucial for a company or business to have a website.

The website is the place where people will associate and connect with a business. Online and offline marketing activities will attract customers to the website and hence promote the business. Whether it is to get information about the services and products, to make bookings or buys, or to get contact details the website is the hub of all this information.

You may work an incredible showcasing effort just to be frustrated by sales because your website’s landing page doesn’t convert. A website with a bad web design can fail to meet expectations for various reasons, including site speed, responsiveness or route. The significance of a quality site to the accomplishment of the digital marketing strategy should not be undermined.

What is web design? According to Wikipedia, web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; interface design; authoring, including standardized code and proprietary software; user experience design; and search engine optimization. The term web design is normally used to describe the design process relating to the front-end or the client side of the design of a website including writing markup. Web design only partly overlaps web engineering in the broader scope of web development. Web designers are expected to have knowledge regarding the usability and if their role involves creating markup then they are also expected to be up to date with web accessibility guidelines. Technologies used to create websites include W3C standards like HTML and CSS, which can be hand-coded or generated by WYSIWYG editing software.

Let us now look at what role a web design plays in the digital marketing sphere:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

What is SEO? It is a measurable, repeatable process that is used to send signals or messages to search engines that web pages should appear on Google’s index.

Google uses a complex mathematical formula called an algorithm to give a score to every website and every search people to make using Google to figure out which website should rank best for what people are looking for. One can have an effect on the website search engine ranking by having the highest score in terms of quality of the website, having the highest score in terms of authority of the website, and by having the highest score in terms of the most trusted store for that search that people are looking for. Quality wise what search engines are trying to measure or figure out is what websites should rank and whether they offering something valuable or unique or interesting to Google searchers.

Trust is another factor that plays to getting the website to rank in Google. Google will display those websites which are secure and trustworthy. Websites or stores or companies that consistently have poor reviews, immediately decreases the chances of Google displaying your website in their rankings.

Google will display websites that are popular. Build a social network, get people to link to the website, get people to share and like the products on their social network, get people to comment, leave testimonials, show pictures of themselves wearing the product or using the product, Creating a fan-base and then rallying them to link to the company really boosts the credibility of the website and company. This shows that the website is trustworthy and authoritative and worthy of being displayed on top of the search results.

So if you think about it, SEO is really just a process getting the attention of search engines and showing them that this website is the most authoritative, the most trusted, the most unique and interesting website that they can offer to their customers – the searcher.

This is usually the biggest reason discovered or seen for website redesigns – Their current website simply doesn’t meet the requirements for ranking high in Google anymore, so businesses redesign their website to incorporate all of the elements they deem ranking factors. There exists now a duplicate content elimination craze! So why not save prevent the elimination process and just ensure there is no occurrence of duplicate content in the first place? There are three main instances when this occurs; news pages and blog categories that pull in content from the posts themselves, automatically generated duplicate pages and (most common with ecommerce sites) duplicate product descriptions of similar items with very little difference in specifications. The occurrence of any of these three can have a devastating impact on the rankings. Another thing to consider from the back-end design of a website is the capability to insert the necessary information. It is surprising to see how many websites exist that do not have the functionality to input custom Meta descriptions, Alt tags and the like. These are some of the more simple elements of SEO; therefore must be incorporated in the design.

All of this can be achieved through effective web designing!

• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

According to Wikipedia, in internet marketing, conversion optimization, or conversion rate optimization is a system for increasing the percentage of visitors to a website that convert into customers, or more generally, take any desired action on a webpage. Conversion rate optimization happens after the visit of the customer makes it to the website. This is different from conversion optimization for SEO or paid ads which focuses on who clicks through to the website from the organic search results, how many clicks the website get, and which keyword is driving traffic.

It is important that a website looks well designed and authoritative in appearance. That said, this doesn’t mean a simplistic design won’t work. A design that is too complex can have negative implications on the load time of the site; but on the other hand, if it is too simple there is the risk of looking untrustworthy. Here balance is needed. When considering the conversion rate of a website one needs to ensure that the web design is simple enough to satisfy user experience but complex enough to satisfy CRO. It can be quite a task but getting it right will bring in huge benefits!

• User Experience (UK)

The design of a website has a huge impact on the user experience of the visitors. This includes taking care of matters from making the navigation simple and easy to use, to ensure the speed of the website is as fast as possible.

Site speed is now considered to be a ranking factor due to its implications on UX. As the speed of the internet increases, so does users’ expectation of page load time. If the web design incorporates large images and other elements it slows the load time, and thus negatively impacts the UX of the website. There are many ways of increasing this load time such as compressing files and carrying out a full audit. During the design process, many web designers try to over complicate the navigation of their website for the purpose of using flashy designs. But do not forget that the key goal of the website is to satisfy all the users who visit your website. If the website does not satisfy the user, they will not stay, let alone come back.

The visual elements can also have an impact on web design. Provoking the right emotion within the user by displaying the visual elements in a proper way can dramatically increase the user experience of the website. So it is important to make sure the website is designed accordingly. Finally, in connection with the point about site speed, it is quite common for websites to be designed in flash, or with high levels of interactivity in the hope to increase the UX of their website. This will, in fact, have the opposite effect as it will slow down the load speed and can make for a confusing experience if done wrong.

As it can be seen web design and development can have a huge impact on some of the most important elements within a digital marketing strategy. The mentioned elements are just some of the more important factors relating to develop a great and effective digital marketing strategy. Make sure to consider all aspects of the marketing strategy and get your web designing done by a professional. It all starts with a web design. So when by hiring a professional you will be able to incorporate all the important and necessary things in your website. It is an investment and you will see the benefit of doing so in the future.