For any business, regardless of industry, a solid web presence is a must. Even if your products or services exist solely offline, your website is home base—providing prospective clients with useful information and giving you a steady stream of potential leads.
But simply having a website isn’t enough. Your site needs to be sleek and professional, well-organized, easy to navigate, clear, and concise. These aspects will give visitors a great first impression of your company and show them that you know what you’re doing—and, more importantly, know how to solve their problems.
So how can you create a website that accomplishes all these things? Here are six ways to get started:
1. Create a blog
Blogs are a great way to demonstrate your expertise. Writing posts about relevant industry-related topics positions you as a thought leader, showcasing your company’s innovative perspectives to solving important challenges. Sharing your solutions to problems faced by customers builds a level of credibility and trust.
Blogs are also a great way to connect with people. They’re typically written in a conversational tone and allow readers to get to know your company and unique voice on a more intimate level.
Of course, we know you’re not in the business of writing blogs. After all, that’s why you’re not a marketing firm—we are. An easy way to ensure quality content is to hire someone to ghostwrite blogs for you, so you can focus on what you do best.
2. Make sure your site is mobile responsive
Since 2015, more people now perform searches on mobile devices than desktops meaning a well-developed mobile site is critical to making a good impression. With so many device sizes, it can be difficult to know if your website works on every single one.
The easiest way to ensure uniform appearance and functionality is with a responsive design that allows the site to adjust to any screen size for optimal viewing. Many modern website themes and builders have this function already built in. If you’re working with a professional web developer, they’ll work with you to ensure your website is responsive and provides the best experience for the user.
Your mobile-responsive site needs to be easy to read, load quickly, and naturally guide the user to important information. What’s an easy way to test this? Put yourself in the user’s shoes—visit your site on your phone or tablet and take notes. You can also check to see how your site looks on other common screen sizes using this free tool.
3. Have concise messaging
Your website should be a place for users to find information about your company, quickly and easily. This also means making sure that there isn’t too much information on your site. Giant blocks of text will discourage users from reading it. Instead, include key points and links to pages that elaborate more on specific topics. Make use of pictures, graphics, and interactive elements to engage your users instead of just overwhelming them with text. Your website is a tool to introduce potential clients and other stakeholders to your company. Let it make the first impression then use a follow-up call or meeting to elaborate.
4.) Track user behavior
Using tools like Google Analytics and CrazyEgg, you can track everything—what pages your users are visiting, where they’re clicking on, how long they spend looking at an image, and more. This information is incredibly valuable because it gives you clear data on the performance of your site. What parts are users engaging the most and what are they scrolling right past? If something important, like a ‘Get a Quote’ call to action button, isn’t getting much user attention, you’ll be able to analyze and take corrective action.
5.) Update your content regularly
New content is important for many reasons and keeps users engaged with your company. By sharing answers to industry questions, announcing new hires, and spotlighting recent accomplishments, you’re showing potential clients that your business is active and ready to tackle their challenges.
Fresh content also helps you with search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines like Google are constantly crawling websites, looking to index new information. The more often you update your website with quality content, the higher your site will rank in search results.
One of the easiest ways to add content to your site is by doing something we discussed earlier—creating a blog and posting to it often. You can also link your social media feeds to your website so whenever you tweet or post to LinkedIn, your website will automatically update with those posts.
6) Links, links, links
No matter what page they’re on, users should be able to easily get where they need to go. Ensure your main menu is available from every page of your website so users never hit a dead end. To make sure you’ve covered all the bases, draw out a physical map of your website. Is it easy to navigate? Does it flow naturally? Are there any pages on an ‘island,’ not linked to anything? Answering these questions will help you to create a website that users will want to explore.
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