First Impressions Last: An Annelle Digital Website Redesign

Ever heard of the saying “first impressions last”? I am sure you have.

If you had to go to a job interview, on your 1st day in the office, meet the parents of your fiance for the first time – i’m willing to bet you have applied this saying. 

man inserting calling card labeled make a good first impression

According to Forbes, it only takes seven seconds (7sec) within the meeting that people will have a solid impression of who you are – and some research suggests a tenth of a second is all it takes to start determining traits like trustworthiness.

Now that’s not enough time to have a proper conversation going, but we must make what is due and hope for the best.

A Website is your calling card

Your business’ website is the personification of your company online. It is your brand’s calling card on the internet. This is where your brand interacts with strangers from around the world. People that don’t know anything about what you sell or what you do.

And when a prospect happens to land on your page, your site needs to make that good first impression. If your website fails to do so, your prospects might leave and go to websites that do. Remember, a tenth of a second is all it takes.

Content is not always king

Content is King. But that isn’t always the case. When it comes to making the best possible first impression on the web, I say Design is King. 

Have you ever landed on a website and the site’s spinning wheel keeps on turning and turning? I am sure you have at least once. What do you do? Do you stay or do you just search for a different website that matches your query?

Or have you landed on a page and the layout’s a mess or the color is just wrong and you can literally hear your eyes screaming.

No matter how good your content is, a first-time visitor won’t be able to read it. A Stanford study shows that 75% of consumers admit to making judgments on a company’s credibility based on the company’s web design. What they will first see is the design of your site, and judge you for that alone. If they don’t like what they first see, off they go to visit your competitors.

Annelle Digital goes clean

In preparation for Annelle Digital’s third year anniversary, we planned a redesign of our website. Our previous web design is already okay, but as the saying goes, you can always find room for improvement.

before and after screenshot of Annelle Digital's home page

Annelle’s team decided to go for a minimalist design for the new website which tends toward more whitespaces, better typography, grid layouts, and less color. Not only does it look better aesthetically, but a minimalist web design helps with SEO.

Web design affects SEO

Quality visual paired with great content leads users to stay a little bit longer on your site. When users take part and dive into your content, this signals search engines that your site is reputable and rank-worthy.

With the help of web design best practices, balanced with a good-looking site, web crawlers can index your site more quickly, boosting your rankings.  

A simple and clean feel flows throughout Annelle’s website. From the Services page to the About section.

before and after screenshot of Annelle Digital's services page
before and after screenshot of Annelle Digital's about us

When designing a website, you need to keep both the users and search engines in mind. It is advisable to invest in a good web design at the beginning. 

What is your first impression of our new website? Let us hear in the comment section below.

Not sure how to combine a good web design and SEO? Message our team and together let us build a strategy in taking your business to the next level.

BellyBind website redesign: Is it similar to fixing a home?

Upgrading your website is not as simple as changing the template or your color scheme then expect for traffic to come in from social media and search engines.

The best way to put it, redesigning a website is like renovating your home. And just like any major home renovation, it is not a walk in the park. First, you tear down what is not up to code, then you set the foundation in place, then you finally start building.

Renovations may take weeks or even months. It’s not as simple as seen on TV. After a brief video montage and poof! your home is finally done.

Renovating a website may also take time to complete. Especially if your goal is to optimize SEO

 

lady painting the wall and a lady redesigning a website in a laptop

 

This is what we did for BellyBind.com, a wellness business based in Hong Kong that is dedicated to the overall well being of mothers and their child. Supporting clients for over 15 years, the owner Rhy employed the services of Annelle Digital to revamp her website and make it more searchable on Google.

BellyBind’s website is already pleasant to look at by us humans, but that is only one side of the coin. It should also be easily readable by Google spiders.

A new logo

Rhy wanted to redesign her logo first and foremost. She wanted to convey her brand of helping pregnant women. However, she doesn’t want to erase her butterfly logo which she loves so much. 

After a few iterations to the logo design, we retained the butterfly wings and added a vector of a pregnant woman. Rhy loved the end result.

 

bellybind before and after logo design

Keyword Research

BellyBind’s owner Rhy wanted to target keywords that could bring in more traffic to her business. And for small businesses targeting the local market, long tail keywords are more suitable as they are easier to rank for and lead to a higher conversion rate since the search intent is easier to predict.

Targeting long tail terms with search demand will be the first step for Belly Bind and Babies by Rhy then eventually more competitive queries will be targeted when the website gains more authority.

Title tags, Alt-tags and Meta description

BellyBind’s title tag length and meta description should be unique for every page and are ideally within the character limit so as not to have this element truncated. These page elements including headings should be keyword-rich for search engines to understand the page and associate it to various queries.

All of the images in BellyBind’s original website are missing alt-tags. Alt Tag is a short text description of your image and it’s used to give context to search engines regarding the said image

We updated the title tag based on keyword research and meta description for all pages. We also added alt tags for all images on the website. We properly set the H1 for the pages to represent what the page is about.

Internal Linking

We found internal linking opportunities to the site. Search engines use links to find out what content on your site is related and the value of that content. 

Adding internal links helps search engines understand the relevance of pages, relationship between pages and value of pages. Using the target keywords as anchor text can help the landing page to be deemed relevant to the keyword by search engines. 

The website restructure can further allow us to add keyword-targeted internal links

Website Restructure

screenshot of bellybind homepage.

BEFORE

 

 screenshot of bellybind homepage after redesign

  AFTER

Service Page

The bulk of the redesign of the website fell on the services page. There are no dedicated pages for the services that should have allowed the page to rank for the specific name of the massage services being offered

To improve the services page, we created 5 new pages for each of the services of BellyBind. Added a service from the existing as well. Not only will Rhy explain her services better to clients, we could optimize to target keywords.

     screenshot of bellybind service page

     Service Page Before      

                                                  

screenshot of bellybind service page after redesign

    Services Page After

 

Each service, once clicked will send you to a separate page describing the service in more detail.

Blog Page

A blog page in my opinion is one of the important parts of a website. A blog is the most effective way to build brand awareness, while providing relevant and useful content to your target audience through consistent blogging. 

BellyBind is missing out on this opportunity to connect to their audience.


screenshot of bellybind blog page

 

Blogging is an inexpensive way for small businesses to drive traffic to their site, enhance inbound marketing efforts and attract more prospective customers.

We added a blog in the menu and wrote 4 articles related to the business in order to build authority in the industry and have a chance to rank for more keywords.

Project Timeline 

Renovating a website, like renovating a home, one must be prepared for delays. A Lot of factors can go wrong. And most of the time you don’t have control when things go south. Having a contingency plan is a must. 

Annelle Digital forecasted a 3 month timeline for the project. Good thing everything fell into place and we delivered ahead of schedule. We also threw in 4 social media posts for each of the blogs as a bonus.

It has been a great learning experience to work with Rhy on this project. Who knew pregnant women can get a relaxing massage too? Not only is it safe, there’s a lot of benefits as well.

If you’re in Hong Kong, you may want to try Rhy’s service. Book an appointment at https://www.bellybind.com/