Our Omaha web design team builds websites exclusively on the WordPress platform, both for our own websites, and for client sites. We use WordPress because it enables us to leverage off-the-shelf design work and plugins that result in websites that look better, are easier to use by both admins and people surfing the site, are much easier to update, add content to and add functionality to than hand coded sites, all for a thousands less than if you pay someone to build a site from scratch.

The site you’re looking looking at is a perfect illustration of this. Instead of spending thousands to add live chat, appointment booking and project management functionality to the latest revamp of our site, it cost us a few hundred in labor and off-the-shelf premium WordPress plugins from third-party vendors.

With the increasing proliferation of mobile, web-enabled devices, it’s now more important than ever that businesses – especially local businesses – optimize their website designs for smaller screens, collect positive reviews and and set up their listings and social profiles correctly, to pull in quality mobile traffic.

Our Omaha web design team understands that making a website mobile-friendly is more than just making sure it looks good on a smartphone. Just like this website does at smartphone-sized screens, we can make sure it’s very easy for people to call you if they surf your site from their phones and/or tablets, make sure that your site is easy to navigate on small screens, is as light on data as it can be and is hosted on a server that will deliver it quickly – all ranking factors for mobile search on Google now.

In the past, you could get away with essentially having a static, online version of a pamphlet of your business as your website, but people are getting used to websites that are more and more engaging. Like you see on our site here, people who come to your site will be more likely to stay on your site (a ranking factor on Google) and become paying customers if they find an interactive experience.

This can include things like graphical elements that react visually to being hovered over or clicked, elements that shift or slide on a timer or when viewers scroll, live chat widgets that allow clients to communicate with you live if you are both logged in at the same time, having media like video – including motion graphic video that we can do for you, or optimize video you provide, or was produced by another vendor for you.

As the search engine algorithms have evolved to punish those “black hat” SEOs that try to game the system rather than earn their way to the top, Google has begun rewarding sites that keep people on them longer. Making sure that you have engaging content is more important than ever because of this, as well as making sure that your site is intuitive – built to be easy to use.

One of the most important themes that all of the sites our Omaha web design team produce for clients have is that we ensure that the information people are looking to find on that website is easy to find – ideally only one or two clicks away. Web surfers are notoriously lazy, but if they can find what they’re looking for quickly and easily, they’ll be much more likely to be nudged toward your sales funnel.

Along the same lines of being easy to use, our Omaha web design team knows that you have to make sure that you gently nudge people who come to your site toward your sales funnel. This comes in many forms, from floating tabs on the side of the window asking people to contact you, having phone numbers easy to click on when readers see your site on their phone to sidebar links and buttons spread throughout regular site content and blog posts to nudge people toward whatever it is you want them to do on your site.

These elements are called ‘Calls to Action’. There is a bit of an art and science to spreading them over your site enough so people will be more likely to see them at the right moment, without having so many that it seems like an online version of high-pressure sales tactics – looking spammy like that is counterproductive.