You’ll need a brand-grade website as social unravels, no-code tools are levelling up the design

Social media platforms are rented land. And many brands are rethinking the value of tenancy agreements. You’ll know first hand how volatile algorithms, fragmentation, shaky content and changing behaviours mean that social as you knew it is unravelling. We’re not saying it’s the end.  But we reached peak social in 2022 says the FT and it’s been on a downward spiral ever since. 

Those brands investing in the land they own, websites, email and newsletters etc, to build direct and deeper connections with customers and clients will win through. Now is the time to do something if you’ve only got social pages, or creating or updating your website is on the to-do list 

What do the numbers say?

• 75% of users judge a brand’s credibility on its website design (Standford)
• The number of UK small businesses without a website is around one in five (22%) (Forbes)
• 69% of UK businesses without a site think they should have one (Forbes)

And then there’s the algorithm abyss.

Hello. Is there anybody out there?

Organic reach on social is vanishingly small. At the highest watermark, and depending on platform and who you ask, algorithms serve up your posts to 10% of your followers at best. But here’s the thing. If you’re building sign-ups to your newsletter via your website, then you’re increasing the pool of people who get to choose whether they want to read your email. It’s direct. And you own the list.

Your credibility mothership

Your site is your brand estate. It’s not just a shop window. It’s a place to enhance credibility and build trust. These are human pursuits so let’s handle the people first. It’s no coincidence that in the same year as the FT report, research by Squarespace and YouGov found that almost 8 out of 10 Brits thought that a brand with a well-designed website was more credible than one with only a social media page. 

There are no two ways about it. A professionally designed website is your credibility mothership. This is a hill we’re willing to die on. You’re in control. Nobody can gatecrash. It’s the place where you own your identity, narrative, stories and content. Through distinctive design, visuals, messaging and tone you stand out by being unforgettable.

The cost of beige

Pick an industry. Walk through a few websites. Most will look and feel the same. Not because brands don’t care. People are busy. The website slips down the priority list. You might not have the know-how to upgrade or design in-house. You’re all-in on social. You’re worried that you’ll drain your budget. What you’ve got will do. But if your website doesn’t look and feel intentional and modern, you’ve neglected your site, or it looks like it hasn’t been touched for years you’re denting your credibility and eroding trust. 

A website has only three seconds to load and engage a visitor. If your branding is outdated or inconsistent, the layout is cluttered, the design is non responsive, load times are slow, the site isn’t optimised for mobile – this adds up to a poor user experience. Visitors will probably just click away and won’t want to come back again. 

That’s before we get onto the content. If people can’t find the answers they need, your most recent case study or blog post is from 2022, you’ve still got a Covid notice on your site (we still see them) or your team details are out of date, visitors will lose faith and click away. People and machines look for cues in your content. Trust signals lie in your page and post content, testimonials, user-generated content and case studies. Is everything up to date on your site? 

The good news. Creating a brand-grade website has got quicker and gentler on budget. You could save as much as 50% when design and front-end build are the same task and happening at the same time.

Levelling up web design with no-code tools

Low-code or no-code tools like Framer mean that we can help our clients punch above their weight by creating sites that look and feel custom built with visually stunning layouts and a great UX –  without writing a single line of code. We can design from scratch or redesign what you’ve got. Developers don’t panic. There still plenty of scope to work in Framer. Code overrides for bespoke functionality and components for example. And these tools are always best if designers know HTML/CSS.

Leading tech brands love Framer

Leading brands such as Huel, Doordash, Dribbble, NBA, Zapier and interestingly a number of well known AI brands such as Perplexity, Flora and ElevenLabs all use Framer for their marketing websites, brand guidelines or collaborative projects.

Make the right call

Framer works best for brand-led marketing sites, landing pages and campaign sites where design fidelity matters and the project isn’t driven by complex functionality. If you need a large content-heavy site, are an e-commerce brand or require complex integrations then this also isn’t the design route for you. Angela used to run Design By Day where they created complex WordPress sites and web applications – so can help you easily make this call. 

Building sites with a tool like Framer means we can hand over a top-notch functioning website without having to hand off to a separate dev team, losing weeks in translation. Costs don’t ratchet up and deadlines don’t slip. As designers we keep control over brand AND the UX. We create high-fidelity websites that align with your brand’s visual identity. Typography, colour palettes etc are locked in ensuring consistency across all pages. 

An in-built CMS means you can manage content yourselves and add case studies, blog posts, product listings etc. In-built SEO tools help with ranking and visibility. Pages are optimised by default, with full control over SEO mark-up, indexing rules, redirects, meta descriptions, page titles, alt tags and structured data as you’d expect with any web platform.

Example: iGaming Leader

One of our recent websites created using Framer is iGaming Leader. An exclusive community for senior executives in the iGaming industry, connecting them through peer-to-peer mastermind sessions and a podcast series where leaders share unfiltered, informed perspectives.

Framer CMS Collections were used extensively for the Podcast section and the Testimonials are also CMS-driven. Structured data is also implemented to help search engines and AI understand the context of web pages.

Other framer websites include: Beauforts, Uniting Capital, Brave Moves and Informed AI.

A final thought on your website and AI readiness

Your website has to be ready for AI search – Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO). LLMs use your site structure, readability, technical health and content depth – looking for expertise, experience, trustworthiness and authority (EEAT) – to judge what content to pull in its results (it’s not just pulling links). You’ll still need to use traditional SEO tactics. If you rank low that’s not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to LLMs. The search ninjas over at SEMRush found that ChatGPT, for example, cites web pages that traditionally rank in position 21+ almost 9 times out of 10. Others are more stringent on higher rankings. 

The finding was part of a bigger piece of research on AI’s impact on SEO. The researchers say that AI search visitors could overtake traditional search visitors within two to four years. They predict the crossover could be as early as 2028. Keep an eye on Google’s AI mode, which sits as a tab at the moment, when it becomes the default, the crossover will no doubt accelerate. Is your website ready? Have you got a website? How will you get found and known?

Curious about using Framer to build your site? Let’s schedule some time together. Connect with us here.