How To Make Your Website Work For Your Business

How To Make Your Website Work For Your Business

You may have the greatest website in the world in terms of layout and design but if your website isn’t helping you grow your business what’s the point?

It’s like having a highly attractive sales person who sits around all day planning their vacation and taking naps in between.

If you don’t expect your website to help you grow your business to some degree you need to change your expectations.  And while websites these days are easier then ever to build and maintain it’s all the more reason why they should contribute leads for growth as well as client satisfaction.

Here are 5 ways your website should help grow your business followed by 5 ways your website should help with client satisfaction:

5 Ways Your Website Should Contribute to Growth

1.  BE FOUND BY THE SEARCH ENGINES:  Your website needs to be optimized for search (SEO).  Search engine traffic is the number one way that people searching for the products and services you sell will fine you.  At the risk of restating the obvious, it bears repeating:  SEO is for when the searcher does NOT know the name of your business but is looking for your service offerings.  If you are an executive coach named ABC Coaching, you would want ABC Coaching to come up in a Google search when someone types “executive coach” or “I need an executive coach” or something similar into Google.

2.  MAKE AN OFFER:  If someone does find your business via a search they may be early in the buying cycle and looking to gather information.  Help them make a buying decision by offering them a free report, tip sheet, buyer’s guide or video tutorial in exchange for their email.  By giving something of genuine value, not a sales pitch, you help the prospect move closer to make a buying decision — from you!

3.  EXPLAIN THE BENEFITS OF WHAT YOU OFFER: Quickly and concisely explain the BENEFITS of your products and services.  You can provide additional information but don’t lead with FEATURES.  People don’t buy lawn mowers.  They buy an easy, fast and economical way to cut their grass!

4.  CALL TO ACTION: Tell people what you want them to do next.  Don’t assume they’ll know.  Include clear and concise CTAs.  Remember that download offer?  Have that prominently featured in several places around the site, not just on the home page.  Include CTAs on your internal pages, in your side bar areas, footers, etc.

5.  PROVIDE COMPLETE CONTACT INFO: Again, this sounds obvious but make it stupid easy for people to be able to reach out to you.  Yes, that includes phone number and email address and ideally an address.  Just having a form without an email address reduces confidence about getting a response.  Worries about getting SPAM from a visible email on your site are outweighed by the benefits.  Why go into a defensive posture —  assume a proactive stance.  If you’re still worried about SPAM get a Gmail Pro account — $10 a month, which weeds out about 99% of SPAM.  Much better at SPAM detection than Outlook.  You can still use your main email address and have it run though Gmail Pro.  In fact, info@samsonmedia.net is a Gmail Pro account.  And if you work from home and are concerned with posting your address, at least post the city and state so people know what part of the world you are in.  

5 Ways Your Website Should Help With Client Satisfaction

  1. HAVE AN UPDATED FAQ SECTION:  A Frequently Asked Question area is immensely helpful.  But here’s how to really make it useful:  Whenever you get more than one person asking the same question, add a new FAQ.  Listen to your clients and customers and make it easy for them to find the answers they need.
  2. HAVE A SAQ SECTION: Anticipate problems before they come up by offering up a Should Ask Question section.  These are areas of your business that your clients and customers may not even know they need to know or don’t know they need to know it.  Yet.  Think proactively and try to anticipate their needs in advance.
  3. HAVE A BLOG:  A blog adds tremendous value to your site.  It’s probably the most important area since this is where you can educate your clients, announce new products and services and keep updated with the latest information about industry trends and special events.
  4. INTEGRATE WITH SOCIAL MEDIA:  Cross link to your social media outlets and use them to listen and RESPOND to client concerns and questions.  Social media is a two-way street that’s not so much about pumping out self-serving sales messages but more about communicating and engaging with your audience.
  5. VIDEOS:  Videos are a GREAT way to show product demos or offer screencasts to explain product benefits and features.  Videos are so valuable for a variety of reasons that also have to do with SEO and social media and building trust and confidence and trust.  While slightly more complex and expensive to pull off professionally (remember, nothing kills good video faster then bad audio) if you can do it, it is soooo well worth it.

Is your website working for you?  Think of it as an employee and make it earn it’s keep!

What are some ways your website helps your business?

New Jersey SEO Company