When was the last time you looked at your business website? I mean really looked at it. Properly.
If you haven’t done so within the last 6 months it’s probably a good time to give it a good critique. Why?
- To help attract new customers
- Create a stronger online presence
- Increase organic traffic through SEO
Below are five tips to make sure your website is working hard for you:
1. Clean website design
Your business website is your marketing tool. If you’ve already got one, is it clean, clear and easy to navigate? Are you leading customers through to a point of purchase? Are you providing all the information they will need to make a decision to purchase?
If not, it needs to change. As a small business owner, you may be managing your website yourself through WordPress or similar. But the problem is you’ve got a ton of other things to do, so updating your website gets pushed further down the list. Right?
Wrong.
Your website is your tool to sell. Nothing else. Well unless you have a store that customers can come to as well. But then again, even if you do, you could be missing out on many more sales due to your website not working hard enough.
You may want to get a designer involved to clean up the look & feel. Make the messaging stand out better. Make those call to actions work hard. Someone who knows what functionality and features you need to make sure it’s a good advertisement for you and your business.
2. The key information stands out
When you look at the homepage of your website how easy is it for your customers to find the key information? To make a purchase? Just because a visitor arrives on your website it doesn’t mean they’re prepared to hang around for ages looking for the information they want.
Time is short – if they are serious about needing what you provide, they’ll be serious about getting all the details they need immediately. If they can’t find them, they’ll go elsewhere.
At this point you may wish to invest in the expertise of a copywriter. They can review the content that’s already there and make it work harder for you. Simple techniques regarding tone and language, can be the difference between 10 sales to 100 sales, or more…
3. Quality & up-to-date content
Following on from the above point, when was the last time you reviewed your website content in it’s entirety? Perhaps your website is a few years old now. If so, it’s likely that things have changed. Products or services have been updated, you have new testimonials, prices have changed.
Take some time to read your content thoroughly. You may have written it a while ago and realise now that it doesn’t sell your services or products well enough.
Ensure you’ve included the keywords and phrases you’re targeting. Add recent client / customer testimonials. And finally, don’t forget to check all internal and external links are working.
Again, you may wish to consider investing in a copywriter who can take your content and make it stronger, more powerful and work harder. The financial costs will very quickly be outweighed by the positive effect better content will bring.
4. Include a blog
This is a great way to attract traffic, but if you’ve got a blog you need to be posting articles regularly – a dated blog is worse than no blog at all.
If you can’t commit to a regular schedule, find someone who can do it for you. There are many copywriters out there who will happily take on the work. You may be amazed at how this alone can help increase revenue.
5. Be social
If you’re active on social media channels, make sure you include these on your website. Provide links to start connecting and building relationships – this could open the door to future sale opportunities.
Remember your website is the face of your business, don’t neglect it. By reviewing and updating its content on a regular basis you will create a stronger online presence and present a more professional front to your customers.
Thank you for the reminders Ms. Begley. It really can be overwhelming to get it ALL done. Just learning everything I need to do will sometimes cause me to panic, believing it is impossible and every though completely escapes me!
I love finding simple, direct and easy to read help. This is so much easier to comprehend than most articles.
I would love to be able to afford a copywriter, designer, et, unfortunately my business is still to new. I promise myself daily that will be my first big expense when I can do it.
Please keep writing so I may continue to understand the help I need!
Thank you
Thanks Poppy, I appreciate your comments and am glad you found the article simple to follow and useful. I also understand the difficulty in affording outside help when a business is still in the early stages. However often it can be a catch 22 situation. At the moment you may not be getting the custom you deserve because your customers aren’t finding you online. Carrying out SEO and implementing simple changes to content may help your business grow quicker. You can do some of this yourself, when you have time! Google’s keyword tool (http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/) can help business owners to pinpoint keywords and phrases that have a high search volume with a lower level of competition, depending on your market. Once you’ve got a good idea of what keywords and phrases should be in your website content, populate your text with these in a natural manner focusing on the homepage primarily. Then over time, you may have more disposable income to invest in a professional to take the content and keywords and make it work even harder. Professional copywriters are trained to know what works and what doesn’t. Everything from tone to language to style based on your target audience can help increase those all important sales. In the meantime the very best of luck with your business.