An effective website is vital to your online digital presence. Too much noise and irrelevant info will drive potential clients away.
You need to show that you can deliver something your clients need. Sounds simple, but why are 80% of brands not doing it?
We’ve put together five of the most important things that your website needs. Do these five things and we guarantee your leads will increase.
First of all, identify who your customer is. Your messaging needs to resonate with them. Write your copy for them, not yourself.
Work out what your customers’ problems are and why they need your product or service. Your potential client needs to understand what you offer straight away.
Your messaging above the fold (what the user sees before they scroll down) needs to be short and enticing. Your tagline should be easy to understand.
And if you offer multiple services or products, you should focus on the product or service that generates the most revenue. You can explain everything else when you have the customer hooked.
Content above the fold should meet one of three criteria:
-It should state exactly what your business does
-It should solve a problem OR
-It should promise a desired identity.
Don’t make your customer work hard to try to understand why they need your product or service. Make sure they immediately know what’s in it for them.
Clear Call-To-Action's (CTA's) are key to a successful website. They’re key to changing website traffic to conversions.
It doesn’t matter what your campaign objective is. Maybe you want a website user to set up a call, download a PDF, or sign up for a newsletter. The CTA is key to guiding your website user in that direction.
The centre of your main banner is a hot spot for a direct CTA. You should also consider placing a CTA in the top right-hand corner of your website. It should be a different colour to the rest of the site, so it stands out.
Your CTA should be varied across your website. A website user often needs to see them several times before they break through the noise.
Make it easy as possible for them to carry out the option you want. Make it easy to convert.
You don’t need to rely on words to make an impact. Images can allow you to communicate with your customer and tell your organizations' story.
The thing to remember here is that your website isn’t a vanity project. It’s the front face of your business. A key member of your sales team.
Make sure that it communicates exactly what will sell your product/ service to your ideal client.
Make your website content (written and visual) relatable and authentic, flagging unique selling points, features and benefits but do so in a way that is in keeping with the story you’re trying to tell.
You might have a lot going on in terms of the products or services you offer. We do too, and it can be hard to communicate this in a simple manner.
Your best bet is to categorise your services into two or three revenue streams. Focus on your outcomes.
This simplifies your offering and makes it easy for customers to understand how you can help them.
Overloading your potential clients with information will drive them away. Describe your offering in the way your customers would talk about it. Simplify your offering and make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for.
Which leads us to…
People don’t read websites nowadays. They scan them. It’s human nature to make sense of things in the quickest possible way.
For that reason, content needs to be brief, easy to consume, relevant and relatable. Relatable stories are a good way of packaging complex information!
Those five basics are the key to an effective website.
Responsive design and original content are important but you’ll only see the benefits if the basics are in place. They give your website the platform to succeed.
We’ve been building websites since 2006. Get in touch if you want to make your website as effective as possible and maximize its potential.
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