The website switch
Just last year, according to a study by Statista, online shopping was responsible for 9 per cent of Australia’s total retail sales, while 80.8 per cent of people in Australia were shopping online.
It was no secret that having an online presence for businesses was pivotal in the market. But now, due to the effects of COVID-19, self-isolation and the forced closure of so many services, businesses have no choice but to increase their online presence to stay afloat.
Admittedly, it’s easier said than done for some firms to simply sell their product online, but all over the world, there have been success stories. In a recent article, Forbes referred to Ed’s Bakery in the resort town of Whistler, British Columbia, where owner Natasha Tatton was forced to set up a highly popular eCommerce store.
Closer to home, after being forced to shut their doors, Melbourne fine dining restaurant Attica have created a home delivery menu on their website, while global giant Amazon have seen a marked increase in sales over the past few months.
As consumer spending metamorphoses to an almost exclusive online market, it’s more important than ever that businesses improve their online user experience and, at Metronome, it’s a medium we have a host of experience with.
Our work
Online content and website creation are key aspects of our client offering and our ever-growing portfolio pays testimony to this.
Our website upgrade for Wilson Storage is a great example. It involved a complete rethink about the way people approach their self storage enquiry, and what that self storage product might look like.
Starting from scratch we mapped out the entire site with wireframes, keeping an eye on one clear goal – simplifying the steps a user has to go through to submit a request for a quote.
Our work has also seen us integrate two booking engines for one of country Victoria’s most iconic hotels, The Provincial Hotel as well as the website creation from scratch for Batch, Smarter Bathrooms and The Ungasan Clifftop Resort.
Our partnership with Apartment Development also saw this same delivery, as well as gradual improvements to the platform. The inclusion of the House and Land section of the website was combined with consistent content and the implementation of the Development ID platform, which enabled marketers and developers to bring their projects to the worldwide market.
This private platform, available in public and white label instances, allows developers and project marketers to seamlessly manage inventory and stock management, network connections with access to the public marketplace.
These examples scratch the surface of the website creation, maintenance or improvements we’ve completed for clients over the years. All of our platforms are designed to compete in the most competitive of markets — ensuring the design, coding, content and SEO aspects of it are of the utmost quality.
What makes a good website?
First, good websites are well organised and follow a structure, so a detailed mapping of the platform is key. By creating logical and functional organisational structure in your website, site visitors will be able to better navigate and find the content they need. Furthermore, a clear organisation and structure allows Google to easily crawl and index the website.
Next, you need to fill the pages with eye-catching and original content. High-quality websites focus on their audience’s needs, not on what they’re selling. Fresh and engagement content builds the visitor’s interest, so they get involved, invite their friends and come back for more.
Underneath all this breathtaking content is clean and validated code. If we analyse a client’s website for improvements, we will first look in this area. Messy, outdated, or deprecated wrong code can reduce a website’s search engine visibility, slow down the performance, make troubleshooting an issue and ruin the visual quality on certain browsers.
Back above, the website needs to be easy to read. Using UX design research, you can also understand where you need to place your most important pieces of information. Simplistically, high-quality websites use headings to break up the content in sections and provide small blocks of text to help their visitors read their content better.
Lastly, a great website with no visitors is an invisible website. SEO or search engine optimisation will help bring an audience to the site. At Metronome, we take the time and effort SEO needs to strengthen our client’s site and deliver greater ROI (return on investment).
We create and facilitate advertising campaigns, optimise and promote quality content, backlink and conduct keyword research to determine what our client’s audience is looking for. Once these steps are completed, the website is in the best possible position to compete in this ever-cluttering online market.
Our previous experience within this sector will help our existing and future clients stand out from the crowd as we witness a change in how businesses sell their products — a change that may continue beyond these strange new times as we traverse into a new digital work-life.