Is your website working for your business? Often times that is the last thing a small business owner is thinking about, especially if they aren’t selling products or services online. Many times when we build a website, it’s not about generating leads for our client’s business, but rather as creating a professional presence online for them.
However, even if that is the case, your website should still be working for your business. There are 3 different areas you need to review to ensure your website works for your business.
The three areas you should focus on are:
- Your Branding
- Your Website Usability
- Your Calls-to-Action
If these 3 areas are all working on your website they will ensure that your website will be working for you. Below we’re going to dig into each area and I’ll provide you insights, tips and ideas to help you improve your online presence.
Your Branding
Branding is the number one piece of the puzzle. If this isn’t aligned with your business, your website (and frankly anything else) nothing you do is going to work. Your branding is NOT just your logo. To simplify it as best I can branding is a combination of 3 things: Your Voice, Your Look, Your Story.
Your Voice
The first part is your voice. This is how you write your content and how you come across to your audience. Are you more professional or more casual? Are you friendly and funny? Are you optimistic and positive? Formal and authoritative? Inspirational or entertaining? This is informed by who your ideal client is. Think of your absolute best client-to- date. What tone in your writing would they relate to the most? What would make someone else like them contact you? Say, you are the business I want! That will inform your voice, and should be front and center in EVERY piece of writing your business puts out. This means every page of your website should come off with this style of writing, every social media post no matter what platform. Every email. Every proposal. They all should be written the same way.
Your Look
This next part is all about your look, how your audience sees you. This is largely determined by your logo (the face of your brand). The colors and fonts that make-up your logo and compliment your logo make your look. And, that look tells your client who you are.
Are you fashion forward, pushing the envelope?
Maybe you are friendly?
Or trustworthy?
What about modern?
What you select will tell your client what to expect when working with you, and will inform what tone they will expect in your writing, and what kind of service they will expect from you when they decide to move forward having a relationship with you.
Your Story
This is going to bring together your Voice and your Look. Your Story tells who you are as a business, and what ideal client you’re talking to. Yes, client, not clients. Because you have that one ideal client, the perfect one. And that’s who you’re talking to.
We need to take your Voice (let’s say: friendly and entertaining) and your Look (let’s say: relatable and trustworthy) and combine them together in everything we do. It should be clear in our writing and our designs who we are (friendly, entertaining) and what we’re here to do (build a relationship and help you). Our writing should talk directly to our client. It should answer the questions (and fears) they have, build their trust, and make them feel like we were in their head and they need us to solve their problem.
Your Website Usability
This is all about how your ideal client is interacting with your website. Will they have a good experience and be excited to contact you, or will they have a bad experience and leave without reaching out. The best usability is thinking about your ideal client from prospect through completion, their entire journey. Are you delighting and delivering every step of the way?
Does your website work on all devices? How about on all browsers?
Phones, Tablets and computers? Play with it, ask others to play with it and give you feedback. Could they do what you wanted them to do on it? Believe it or not most people are on mobile devices today – so that should be your number one priority.
Do elements stack appropriately? When you’re on a mobile device does everything work as expected?
Be sure that your content stacks appropriately, you don’t want the header then the image, then the content then the CTA. You want a header, text, CTA and then image. Or perhaps you want the image first, as long as it doesn’t take up too much space and push the header too far down. This is what you need to take note of.
Do your forms submit, send you an email and load them into a system you can use for follow-up?
We’ve been adding FluentCRM to all of our websites lately. It makes it easy for our clients to see what form was submitted, who submitted it and then be able to add them to the appropriate list to continue to stay in contact with them. If you aren’t doing something like this, you need to make sure to! And, I always tell our clients: set a date in your calendar that repeats monthly and go in and fill out your form(s). Make sure it functions as expected, so you know you aren’t missing any important leads!
Can your system send automated emails?
What we found is great about FluentCRM is that we can include the free version on every website, but if you’re ready to take your marketing to the next level you can upgrade it and set up flows, welcoming new email subscribers, or automatically send emails when someone fills out a contact form or downloads a document.
Your Call-To-Action
Lastly we need to take it back to the question:
What do you want your ideal client to do on your website?!
Is it clear?! Sign-up? Call you? Read something? How is that action performing right now? What can you do to make it better? Change the color? Or change the text?
These are all the questions you need to ask yourself as you go through your website. A good gut check for this is seeing if you’re getting contacted from your website, and if you are, are you getting your ideal client? If A.) you aren’t getting contacted or B.) you are by the wrong person then you need to revisit this area (and probably also your branding).
Get Your Website Working for Your Business: Key Takeaways
Your website should be more than just an online presence – it should be actively working to support and grow your business. Whether you’re generating leads or establishing professional credibility, three critical elements determine your website’s effectiveness:
- Your Branding – Knowing Your Voice, Your Look and Your Story
- Your Website Usability – Ensuring anyone who comes to your website can easily use it
- Your Calls-to-Action – Making sure it’s clear what you want your website visitors to do
Clarity in these 3 areas will ensure your website is working for you.
Overwhelmed and not sure where to begin? We’re here to help. Contact us and together we’ll light the fire and get your website working for you.
