Got a website? Does it generate business? Is it working like an employee?
Here’s the deal. If your website isn’t making you money or serving its purpose, it’s time to change things. You’ve either spent money developing a site for your business and it’s not working the way you want, or you have used one of these low-cost site builders, did the job yourself with no help and wasted a lot of valuable time.
Sound familiar?
When I talk to customers, my main purpose is to make them realise that their website has to have the correct fundamentals in order for their site to work, or they’re going to spend a lot of money and gain no business in return. The reason I say every website should be worth at least £26,500 is to make the client believe that their website has to work like an extra employee, and here in the UK, the average working salary is £26,500.
Your website is your shop front on the web. It’s where most people will see you first, the first place you need to maximise in making a good impression. No one walks into a shabby shop front, and it’s the same on the web.
Here are some things to consider for your employee (website), and if your site isn’t serving at least one of these purposes, call your web designer now.
Telling a Story
No one likes landing on a website that they have search through Google, read your content and still have no clue what you do. It’s likely that Google won’t even rank you if the content doesn’t match the searcher’s keywords. Ask a few friends and customers to review the content on the site. If they understand what you do then great; if not, try to explain it better. Another tip is to create a video to help explain what you do, as it’s been proven that we consume more information through video than we do by reading a text-based page.
Offline/Online Business Goals
Your business should have an end goal. You generate business from all different angles, such as cold calling, referrals, adverts in the paper, etc., and no matter what line of traffic it came from, it puts cash in the bank. Well, you need to go the same route with your website. If your business has offline goals, which I’m sure it does, it’s time to take some of them, if not all of them, and mould them into online goals.
Educating Your Viewers
Today, since information is so readily available with the help of Google, we need to educate our potential customers in what we do and how we can help them. Why allow them to find the information somewhere else when they could be learning everything they need to know from your website? Never feel that because you’re giving away free information, potential customers will use this against you and you won’t get their business. If someone takes the information from your site and uses it, they would have found it somewhere else and probably would never have given you a dime, as these people are information freeloaders. If you’re able to educate a potential customer and gain their trust, helping them to know your business inside out, you’re more than likely going to get the job.
Content Machine
They say that content is king. If the content isn’t great and doesn’t serve a purpose with clear ideas, it won’t be worth much. Google loves new content so it can crawl your new pages and shift around your site with new links. Blogging serves this purpose so well, and this is also how you can educate your viewers and build that sense of trust before they make an enquiry, sale or pick up the phone. This also gives you an opportunity to share your blog on social media sites, drive traffic back to your website and create social signals, which helps with your website’s ranking. Another tip is to add social media share buttons on your blog so other viewers can share your content easily, too.
The ‘WOW’ Factor
The question here is how do I get the viewer hooked, get them to come back or even make them serve your main purpose of a lead or sale? User experience has to be met, and this is only done through implementing creative and interesting techniques. If you use Google Analytics (which you should be doing), measure the time spent on the site and look at the other key indicators, too. Also, what type of engagement is the website driving? Are many people sharing your blog posts or commenting on your blog? If they’re not, maybe it’s time to change your blogging strategy.
Measure and Learn
I touched on this slightly in the last key point, but if we’re not measuring results, how can we truly measure our success? You may be getting more enquiries, and that’s amazing! But you also must understand the tactics we’re using that aren’t helpful so that you can put your time to better use. When should I share my new blog posts? What type of content creates the best engagement, leads or links to my site? Measure what you’re doing and learn from it.
Summary
The six key points here are everything a real-life employee should be doing and your website should be achieving those as well. If it’s not making any or little difference to your business, it’s time to change things up. Just like you would invest in your employees, you need to do the same for your website. Whether it’s time, money or learning how your website should be working for you, it’s time to get off your backside and do it.
Would you like to add any more key points? Are you struggling with your website at the moment? Would you like to learn more?
Please leave any comments below if your website is struggling to generate those crucial leads and sales, and I’ll be more than happy to answer any of your questions.
