These days, your website is often the first thing your customers sees. That’s why it’s so important that your website gives a good first impression – and makes it as simple as possible for your customers to engage with you further.
Bad websites result in visitors bouncing from your homepage without learning more about your business. Worse still, they lead to incredibly poor conversion rates. When you’re setting up your website, you need to consider the customer experience. By incorporating our five essentials into your website, you should be on the right track towards creating a website your customers will love.
1. A clear description of what you do
While waxing lyrical can be fun, you need to get to the point. When you’re first describing your products or services to a new customer, you only have a short period of time to earn their interest. Be as clear as you can when describing what you do, and remember to be sensitive of your customer’s time – no one wants to search through pages of text to find what they’re looking for.
2. Easy to find contact information
Every small business website should have a contact page with information such as your email address, phone number and physical address (if you have an office or store). You can also embed an easy-to-use contact form to make it easier for customers to send you a message.
Encouraging your customers to get in touch with you (and making it easy to do so) progresses the conversation and increases your likelihood of converting them into a sale. You can even include your contact information in your site’s header or footer to ensure that it’s visible on every page.
3. Accessible and user-friendly structure
A good website is easy to navigate and simple to use – no matter who is using it. Older people and people with disabilities often have difficulty navigating websites, or use assistive technologies to access them, meaning that simplicity is paramount.
To ensure your website is accessible to everyone, you need to ensure that your website is coded correctly, uses simple language, and has a clear site map and navigation systems. Choosing a simple, easy to type URL is also a great way of ensuring your website can be found effortlessly.
When creating your website, be sure to think about how other users might access it. You could even try getting some friends to test it out for you before you go live.
4. Strong SEO foundations
Good search rankings make it easier for customers to find your website. And with Google’s algorithms constantly changing, there’s no way to fake good SEO. Putting in the hard miles up front will pay off in search engine rankings later on, so be sure to set yourself a solid foundation.
Some ways to do this include ensuring all your links work, providing high-quality original content (i.e., don’t duplicate text between pages), using relevant keywords throughout your copy, and having your website coded correctly. By putting the effort in to do it right the first time, you will save time and money trying to correct mistakes later down the line.
5. Relevant, high-quality content
As we’ve already mentioned, content is great for SEO. But more than improving search rankings, content is also a great way to improve customer experience and establish your brand as an intelligent and insightful thought leader.
Putting together a content marketing plan can help you maintain consistency when creating and updating your content. Content is one of the best ways to engage your audience and improve your reputation, so you want to make sure you’re doing it well.
Ready to start building your business’ website? Our copywriting packages are a great way to get your content off on the right foot.