The 6 Must Do’s to have a website that generates Business.
Do you want a web presence or a lead generator that makes you money?
I’m guessing the latter, Building a website is one thing but building one that performs for your business is another. Putting up random webpages yes gives you a web presence but to get a website that generates leads and makes a significant contribution to your company’s sales in another thing. Good website design is a planned process and is focused on performance.
Here are the our top tips for making your website a lead generator:
Website Design
The standard of your web design is crucial to the success of your website. A website is the face of your business and if people are not impressed with this than your off to bad start. Whether consciously or unconsciously potentialcustomers are making an instant impression of you when they land on your site.
If you have an unprofessional looking website then they will auto assume you are an unprofessional business. if you are going to a web designer make sure they are custom building your web design. There are many DIY and template web builders out there and while they may save you a few small quid they don’t deliver the same result. They look amateur so hence so does your business. If you are paying a web designer make sure they are giving you what you are paying for. Good graphic design is the basis of all good website design and this can only be delivered through custom website building with a designer with proper graphics expertise.
Communication
Ask yourself a simple question, what are the 3-5 things your potential customers care about when looking to buy your service or product? Write them down on a piece of paper. In the website world we have a stat we follow called the bounce rate. This is people who leave your website as soon as they land on it. Basically it is visitors who think you are not for them and if this is over 40-50% you need to start looking at your website communication. People decide in the first 5-10 secs on your website whether you are worth investigating further or not. If you are not communicating the things they care about within that period you run the risk of losing them. Good website design communicates clearly what people want to see and instantly on the home page.
Page structure
So how should you structure your website? The answer is your website structure should reflect what people are looking for in relation to your product or service. Google indexes pages for the most part. For example, If you want to rank for the keywords ‘red shoes’ then you must have a page optimised for ‘red shoes’.
So how should you structure your website? The answer is your website structure should reflect what people are looking for in relation to your product or service. Google indexes pages for the most part. For example, If you want to rank for the keywords ‘red shoes’ then you must have a page optimised for ‘red shoes’. Before you plan the structure of your website find out what searches people are making with regards to your products or service. This is a clever way of getting traffic to your website by matching up the searches with web page content. This will allow you to sweep up relevant traffic looking for your products or services.
Mobility& Responsiveness
Being responsive or mobile friendly is now not a luxury but a must. There are 2 major reasons for this. Firstly, approximately 70% of website traffic now is mobile and having a website that people have to pinch in and out and can’t navigate will lose you business.
The second major reason is now Google is downgrading websites that are not mobile friendly. What Google is saying is they simply do not want to give users results that are difficult for them to see or navigate. Non mobile friendly website are going to be gradually downgraded in the position they appear in search results and your competitors with mobile websites will get priority over you.
Run this test on your website to find out what Google thinks of your website https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
If you fail its time you get your website design upgraded.
Navigation
Good website design has good navigation. How easy is it for users to find what they want and buy it or make contact with you about it? This is particularly important when dealing with users on mobile phones where they don’t have a wide and complete view of the webpage.
The content on the menu bar becomes increasingly important. It amazes me sometimes when I see important elements of a website half way down a page and not in prompt access to people on mobile phones. A good web designer will make sure your site is easy to move around quickly and intuitively.
Site speed
There is a huge correlation between website speed and how long and how many pages users visit on your website. Your website should download in 2-3 seconds so it is important
your web designer makes your website code as efficient as possible to allow this. Also, makes sure your server is suitable for your website as no matter how well your website is designed a slow server will make the site slow. See how quick your load speed is at https://tools.pingdom.com
Final Note:
These quick website design tips will get you off to a good start on your quest for a high performing and business generating website. Doing your website properly will pay dividend for sure. A good web designer will guide you through the process and make sure all these boxes are ticked.
It's time to get your business up to speed if it's not. The Digital Department is one of Cork's leading developers of mobile responsive websites and Ecommerce stores.. Please contact us any time on 021 250 9045 or email on info@thedigitaldepartment.ie