Best Web Design for Your Industry

Best Web Design for Your Industry

Picture the last time you went shoe shopping. Did you head to the clearance rack to find the cheapest shoes, even two sizes too small? Maybe while swiping your credit card, you felt a sense of accomplishment. Hey, finding a $5 pair of shoes deserves a high-five.

But what about when you actually start to wear them? Anyone who’s ever attempted to tough out cramped shoes knows the agony of blisters.

Like shoes, websites should fit. They should fit the style, needs, and size of your business. While effective web designs do have similarities, each important element should be adjusted for your unique industry. Take a look at the following to decide how your own website should be customized.

Targets Your Buyer Personas

It’s no secret that marketing should target the audience you’re trying to reach. What many businesses neglect is actually defining this audience, also known as buyer personas.

Defining your buyer personas is helpful for 3 main reasons:

    1. Customer retention. You’ll find how your unique audience likes to be communicated with, how often and with what tone. If you’re targeting the no-nonsense CEO of a huge company, they may prefer to-the-point emails or a quick phone call. If you know they enjoy baseball, free baseball tickets could be a great way to secure their loyalty.
    2. Marketing direction. Many younger audiences prefer interaction on social media. Offering coupons on your business Facebook page could be a great way to drum-up purchases. Often this same crowd isn’t drawn to long periodicals, so if you’re using blogs to attract attention you may want to keep them short and include lots of images.
    3. Effective website design. What colors do they prefer? Do they like simple and clear designs or something more artistic? Your website should be all about your personas and what they like to see.

Although one persona may immediately come to mind, try to dig a little deeper and imagine other possibilities. For example, you’re in the business of selling trail mix. An obvious persona would be a hiker bringing your product along as a trail snack.

Brainstorming a little further, you may consider office workers with a standard 9-5 workday. Bam! Blogs and social posts for a different audience: 5 Healthy Snacks for Your Workday.

If you haven’t defined your business’s buyer personas yet but would like to, learn how in this easy guide.

Uses Unique Keywords to Rank Higher.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a service worth it’s weight in gold. Google has a complex algorithm that is always changing in order to rank websites in search results. Although the complete makeup of it is a secret, it has been discovered that using carefully chosen keywords is a big piece of the puzzle.

In your industry, there are most likely many other competitors on the internet. Each of these businesses are trying to rank higher than each other. By using more specific keywords in your website content, you cut out a some of the competition and receive more qualified visitors. Ranking for ‘ice cream shops portland, maine’ is easier than ‘ice cream’.

SEO firms like ours are able to run keyword audits that display which keywords users are searching for and whether they’re worth targeting.

Focused on Conversion

Conversion is pretty much the main goal of most businesses right? Conversion from a website visitor, to a lead, to a customer. Yes, there is a way to design your website to convert.

  • Clear CTA’s. CTA stands for Call To Action. You’ve seen those ‘download now’ or ‘click here’ buttons before. CTAs come in all different forms and prompt a user to take an action. It should go without saying, but if they are not easily seen it’s unlikely they will be clicked on.
  • Test, test, test. Mistakes are okay, expected, and even encouraged. The only time they aren’t okay is when you aren’t learning from them. A/B testing is conducted by web marketers to compare the performance of two website features. Whichever feature “wins” the test, is the feature that is left on your website.

If users don’t like your ‘click here for a free video’ but do like your ‘download free video’ button, how will you know unless you tested?

  • Short forms. Absolutely nobody likes filling out long forms (if you do, let us know and we’ll admit we’re wrong). If you have an extremely long set of boxes to fill in with little red *’s next to them, many users won’t bother.

Reads and Looks Professional

Unless you’re going for a specific modern, casual impression, your website content should read in a professional manner. Even if you are going for a more casual style, there shouldn’t be grammatical errors. Studies all over the web tell the effect errors have on clients, it discredits your business and professionalism. Double-check, triple-check, and have another person check all your website text.

Your design also leaves quite an impression. You don’t need an inflated budget for a great website design. Here at OSC Web Design, you can land a professional, user-friendly platform to build your online presence and stand out in your industry. Take a look at these web designs for example.


If you want your own custom website focused on conversion, shoot us a message. We’ll find something that fits your brand seamlessly and is blister-free.

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