Neil Williams
User Fusion
For many local businesses, their website may not be their primary source for new business. Even if online marketing and advertising isn’t your thing, there are still some things you can do to make your website work harder for you. Implement these 10 quick wins to make sure your website provides the right impression and produces more prospects who want to pick up the phone and start a dialogue with you.
- Keep your website up to date with fresh content
Regularly updating your website with fresh content and news helps ensure search engines will regularly index your site—meaning you’ll show up in more search results and drive more traffic. Content that is genuinely helpful to your customers also helps you build authority in your field, and prospective customers like to see that your website news page has been updated recently.
- Lose the jargon
If you work in a technical field such as software development or IT services, it’s easy to forget that to the outside world it seems that us techie types speak a different language from the rest of the human race. Always keep your audience in mind. If you’re writing a sales page that sells a technical service to non-technical prospects, keep the language simple and engaging and focus on the benefits of the service, rather than reeling off a list of technical specifications.
- Make sure you offer a great mobile experience
Nearly 70 percent of UK adults own a smartphone, and for many people smart phones and tablets are now the primary way of accessing the Internet. If you haven’t updated your website in a few years then it really is time to consider updating to a site with a responsive design—this will allow your website to adjust its layout automatically to give the best experience to whatever device a visitor is using.
Take the time to test your website on different devices if you already have a responsive design. How does it feel? Just because it is responsive doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement.
- Always Include a Clear Call to Action (CTA)
Every page should include a clear CTA, this helps you suggest what action a visitor should take after reading your content. Depending on the goals of the page, you'll want to have different desired outcomes such as generating leads, newsletter signups, social media shares or sales leads. CTAs should be visually striking, stand out from the page and use action oriented language, such as ‘Register for our FREE guide to IT Support.' You can read more about CTA best practices in this article from HubSpot.
- Include customer testimonials
Customer testimonials are great—they act as social proof and help you show visitors how your services have solved problems for existing customers. Testimonials also help convey a bit more about your brand. Customers will often be quite emotive when talking about your company and staff, making your brand feel more genuine and personable.
- Consider using ad retargeting
Ad retargeting is the same technology that keeps reminding you about that 5 star holiday to Barbados you looked at during last Friday's lunchtime. Chances are you’ve spent a lot of time and money getting potential customers onto your website, if they aren’t quite ready to buy right now it’s a good idea to use ad retargeting to keep your brand popping up from time to time, so when they are finally ready to make a purchase, they come to you first.
If you’re new to ad retargeting, try this beginners guide for more information.
- Go easy on the stock photos
Not all companies have the resources to create their own professional images for marketing, but if you do need to use stock photos, use professional-looking images that are believable to your audience. If you’re a small company serving the local area in the valleys of South Wales, then it’s probably best to leave out the photo of two well-dressed gents with game-show host smiles shaking hands outside a skyscraper. Photos with genuine smiling faces work well, and it also works well if you can include real headshots on your about page, as it give your website a more friendly vibe.
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Now may not be the time for 'War and Peace' When writing for the web, as a general rule of thumb write half as much as you would for print, then cut it down by half again. People are inherently lazy creatures, especially when using the Internet—keep your content as short as it needs to be to get your message across, and break up your content using lists and headings to make it more
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A Video speaks a thousand words As we’ve already mentioned, people often won’t take the time to read your killer sales copy and can be easily distracted when online. Offering a short, snappy explainer video can work wonders for your sales pages. Videos can be a fun and engaging way to tell stories that explain the benefits of your product or service. Remember to keep your video short (30-90 seconds is ideal), friendly and focused on your customers' needs, and of course include a call to action!
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Answer the question: what's in it for me? It’s tempting to start listing features and specifications on your sales page and then call it a day. But to really connect with potential customers you need to really focus on the customer benefits those features deliver. It’s perfectly fine to tell everyone about the features of your product, but your sales copy should be primarily driven by the benefits to your customer and the problem you can help them solve.
Do you have any tips that have worked for you? Please share your advice in the comments below.
Neil Williams runs a small development agency based in Wales called User Fusion. Neil has been building and managing websites for companies across the world for over 8 years and has helped dozens of business to achieve more online.
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