Fifteen seconds is all you have as a web designer to capture someone’s attention on your website, and in those 15 seconds, you have to ensure you are sending the right message across with your design.

This is only possible with clever web design and marketing strategy.

Franchise websites have unique features that set them apart from other business websites. While most business websites aim to establish a brand, showcase their goods or services, and offer useful information, franchise websites have features that make them stand out. Franchise websites advertise individual locations while maintaining the company identity.

Your website needs to be a 24/7 sales and marketing machine. To do this, you must ensure that it speaks to the correct audience and provides a seamless journey from becoming a visitor to a paying customer.

Your franchise’s website is a priceless component of your business, and it does much more than raise awareness of your company and present your brand proposition. It also generates leads and drives sales.

What To Do?

Don’t deviate from your brand guide when creating a business franchise website or a local franchisee website. If your company doesn’t already have one, create one immediately because it will be an invaluable resource.

Your brand identity will remain consistent and stable across platforms if you use a single brand guide for all print and web content. Customers want a similar experience across channels from a single franchise; thus, deviating from it could confuse or disappoint them and alter your brand’s identity.

Many freelancers look for web design franchise opportunities and provide franchise web design and development services, or you could collaborate with a web design company that designs mainly for franchises. Another great way is to have a website design partnership with franchise development websites and franchise web design agencies so you can have the best of both worlds.

How Do You Design a Franchise?

Franchises are a special case when it comes to web design. Not only does your website need to promote each of your locations with unified branding, but it also needs to generate two very distinct types of leads: customers for your franchisees and franchisees to open up new locations.

Web design for Franchise websites must maintain brand consistency while appealing to a broad and diverse audience. A web design is attractive and functional. It makes it simpler for users to interact with your material and helps you communicate your brand. Franchise websites are an excellent source of ideas. Owners must concentrate their efforts on marketing because the company already has a well-known name, brand, and products.

Your franchisees will use the brand to interact with customers (and potential partners); in the end, their success will be determined by how well they get along with those customers. You need to give specific guidelines for how the brands of your franchisees should appear and perform to develop a unified brand. These recommendations should comprise:

a distinct tone and voice for the brand
restrictions on colour schemes and examples
specific fonts
specifications for a logo (if applicable)
guidelines for advertising products or services

Use your guidelines as the foundation for your franchise website design once you’ve developed them. The websites of your franchisees should all have a similar aesthetic, but you also want each website to be distinguishable within that aesthetic.

Give each site its colour scheme, typefaces, and other design elements while ensuring that they all adhere to the standards you’ve established—and making sure they all use templates that match your criteria for style.

How to Design an Effective Franchise Website?

1. Use a Captivating Web Design Theme

The theme of your design should be one of your first decisions. The theme unifies every aspect of your website, from the typeface to the color scheme. While it could be tempting, picking a design theme based on what’s trendy in web design might not be a wise long-term decision.

Try to choose a theme that will be just as relevant now as it was ten years ago if you wish your franchise website to have a timeless interface that will stand out for years ahead.

2. Adopt an Engaging Web Design Theme

A design that is engaging is made with the use of images and font styles. Selecting a font type that complements the images on your website’s home page is crucial. Don’t go overboard when using bold headings and subheads; otherwise, your website will appear cluttered and unprofessional. Try using bold headlines and subheadings only when appropriate. Choose a typeface, and use it for most of your website (except for large headlines).

3. A Unique Logo For the Franchise Website

Creating an original logo for each franchise site is one method to ensure that customers know your brand. By placing it in the header or footer of each page, you can use this as an element of your website design theme.

For consumers to clearly understand their position within the site hierarchy while browsing from one page to another, the color scheme should be consistent with other elements on the page.

4. Ensure the Franchise Website is Easy to Use

For visitors to your franchise website to easily find what they’re searching for, you want it to be simple to browse. This means that if your website has a lot of content, you need have a working search bar on every webpage.

Customers will find it easy to navigate your website if the navigation bar is well-organized, the headlines are clear, and the page layouts are consistent. You don’t want your customers to choose another franchise because yours was too hard to find information.

5. Present Social Proof By Posting Client Testimonials

Why not flaunt your expertise if you currently have satisfied clients who adore your work? There is no better method to show value than to have others praise what you have to offer. Reviews offer an honest opinion of how good a product or service is from someone who has used it, which is the best method to spark interest in it.

By including these reviews on your website, you might win over potential customers who might be wary of making a new purchase.

6. Optimize Your Main Page For SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is optimizing a website to make it more likely to appear higher in search results for keywords related to your company. People are more likely to visit your site if it ranks higher in search results, and leads are more likely to convert if your site receives more traffic (and eventually customers).

Any company that conducts business online needs to optimize its website for search engines, but franchises require special consideration. This is because potential franchisees will conduct A LOT of online research before deciding which businesses to invest in. If your website isn’t search engine optimized, they might not even know you exist!

7. Focus on Lead-Generating Techniques And Calls to Action (CTAs)

You must explain to visitors to your pages what they should do and why they should choose your company over competitors. While lead generation techniques help you get the most out of your web pages, CTAs inform consumers of the next action they should take.

8. Include Unique Graphics And Icons in the Layout of Your Website.

Adding unique images, illustrations, and icons can completely transform how people view your website. Make sure the graphics are appropriate for the type of business you conduct and that they adhere to the site’s overall tone.

A web design highlighting important information with icons and images rather than text may be more engaging. Additionally, relying on colors and images rather than words aids visitors in finding what they’re seeking quickly.

What is Franchise SEO?

Franchise SEO is a broad term for a variety of strategies and tactics used to increase franchise businesses’ search visibility.

This can involve optimizing a local franchise opportunity website to attract new franchisees and ranking individual franchises using local SEO strategies and content production.

Franchise SEO is a critical element of a franchise business’ marketing strategy.

While traditional marketing methods may still be effective, SEO for franchise websites brings companies to the attention of customers who are actively looking for franchise possibilities or the products or services of the company itself.

Individual franchisees’ exposure and success can be increased with an ongoing SEO franchise strategy. Each franchise probably competes on their own customized local search engine results page (SERP), and the more visibility they can gain, the better off their company will be.

Improved brand awareness, trust, and inquiries from new potential franchisees are all potential benefits of increased search ranking in localized searches around the nation for franchises.

What Are the Four Elements of a Franchise?

Although there isn’t a single formula for a profitable franchise, many of the world’s biggest and most prosperous ones share several traits.

1. Strong Training And Support

Any franchise that is worthwhile as an investment will ensure that you receive the support and guidance required to run your business successfully. You should have access to ongoing support in addition to the initial training session, which will instruct you on managing every aspect of your franchise, from marketing to accounting.

Even seasoned business owners will require assistance while pursuing franchising. The best franchises are always there for you in some way, whether they send a team of devoted support employees your way or opt to be your point of contact themselves.

2. Clear Financial Projections

You shouldn’t rely on guesswork to determine a franchise’s financial potential. Any reputable franchise should be open about the potential earnings for franchisees. The financial success of prior franchisees is no assurance that you will reach a similar level of success, so don’t base your choice only on appealing figures.

However, you should clearly understand how long it typically takes for a franchisee to get a return on their investment and your potential long-term profit. Purchasing a brand-new franchise? Make sure your franchisor has a solid business plan and can demonstrate that the idea has been profitable for them over a period of years. If you spend a great deal of money on a franchise, you must be certain that it will be profitable.

3. Consistent Goods or Services

It should go without saying that you should sincerely believe in the quality of the goods and services your potential franchise offers. On the other hand, a successful franchise will have a high level of consistency throughout all of its sites. (We’ve already written on the need to maintain brand consistency.)

You can visit any McDonald’s in your nation and find the same products made from delicious recipes. Similarly, each time you call a Metro Rod engineer, you can count on receiving the same level of service. Naturally, there could be localized changes to serve various foreign markets, but the fundamentals of a top brand are the same everywhere.

You need to determine why your preferred franchise has excellent evaluations in one region of the nation but negative reviews in another. Maybe a terrible franchisee got between the cracks, or the market isn’t as strong in all the cities. However, it can be a sign that your franchisor isn’t offering strong enough guidelines or enough support to enable franchisees to deliver top-notch service regularly.

4. Clear Brand Identity

One of the main benefits of a franchise is that some of the most difficult business growth tasks, such as developing a unique brand identity, have already been accomplished. New and old customers can easily recognize successful franchises like Subway, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Pizza Hut because each site has a consistent theme in decor, branding, and messaging. Building a customer base and encouraging repeat customers can require much time, effort, and money for independent business owners.

You essentially have recognition and devoted clients the moment you sign your franchise agreement when you join a well-known franchise business. This amount of brand recognition greatly influences your success as a franchisee.

Strong brand identity will help you stand out from competitors and convince clients to trust you, even if your franchise is still relatively new and just has a few locations.

It will be more challenging for you to attract customers and their hard-earned money if your takeaway franchise is identical to every other chicken store on the main street in terms of appearance and feel. Imagine yourself as a client when analyzing the franchises that interest you. Does the location seem like somewhere you’d like to spend your money? And suppose you are a young, healthy individual considering opening a mobility shop franchise and can’t come up with a compelling explanation why you shouldn’t. In that case, it might be a good idea to look elsewhere.

How Profitable is a Web Design Business?

While their costs vary from person to person, talented freelance designers for franchises can earn upwards of $75 per hour. Web design specialists often charge between $50 and $80 per hour. The average flat rate for a typical business website is $6,760, ranging from $5,000 to $10,000. These rates are standard in the web design business.

Web design is still a profitable industry. There are still tens of thousands of companies and people without websites. An ongoing need for competent web designers exists. This might also be a fantastic freelance option for many people who want to work from home.

Franchise websites are an excellent source of inspiration. Owners must bring all their attention to marketing because the company already has a well-known name, brand, and products. If you’re considering opening your franchise, these are some of the best franchise websites that will provide you with a tonne of inspiration for designing a premium website.

1. KFC

Source: KFC

It’s easy to navigate the KFC website. It’s simple and clear to find the information you need quickly and efficiently, thanks to the layout’s easy navigation. The website is easy to look at due to its constant colour scheme, which features a red backdrop, white text, and grey links.

2.Ace Hardware

Source: Ace Hardware

Another simple and clean website is Ace Hardware. Thanks to the layout’s easy navigation, you can quickly and easily access the information you need. The website is easy on the eyes due to its consistent use of a red background, white text, and grey links.

3. Pizza Hut

Source: Pizza Hut

The website design for Pizza Hut is simplistic, as you might anticipate from a pizza place. There are only two menu options on their homepage: “Order Pizza” and “Checkout.” The remainder of the website’s content is focused on ensuring that users may quickly purchase pizza anytime they want.

4. Starbucks

Source: Starbucks

One of the most well-known brands in the world is Starbucks. Their brand is reflected on their website as a reliable, well-known name that people go to for comfort and satisfaction. The Starbucks website is simple to use and has obvious calls to action that are simple to find and understand.

5. Planet Fitness

Source: Planet Fitness

The pages on the Planet Fitness website are all well organised, and the overall design is consistent with the sporty and fun aesthetic.

6. Subway

Source: Subway

Subway‘s website brings excitement back into fast food with vivid colours, engaging music and sounds, and an interactive map with a location finder function.

7. McDonald’s

Source: McDonald’s

One of the most renowned fast-food brands ever is McDonald’s. Its website reflects this brand authority with a basic layout that enables customers to quickly and simply discover whatever they need—nutritional data, a map of locations, or any other information.

Key Takeaway

The best first impression you can make on customers is through your website. If you operate a franchise, it must be a good one and fit with the brand.

Your website’s design and development could mean the difference between a successful franchise business and a less successful one. Your website is essential to your marketing, sales, and franchise development strategies; you shouldn’t neglect such a versatile asset.

Several franchise web design agencies solely aim to design websites for franchises and provide development services.

Franchise Web Design – How to Design a Premium Website