Is Your Website Giving the Right Impression of your Business?

Having a website that is giving the right impression of your business can have a big impact on it.

We have a member who couldn’t believe the increase in enquiries they got once they put their website live, after having put it off for so long because they thought word of mouth and social media was fine.

We have a member who knew her website had gone live because she saw an enquiry come through from it before she saw our email saying it had gone live. It was literally within minutes!

We have clients who had a really awful, old website and just by us taking it down and putting up an attractive holding page with a contact form, they saw an increase in enquiries. So, don’t assume just because you have something online that it’s enough. It has to be good.

What are the key things to get right?

Design and Imagery

One of the key things to get right is for the design to look professional and for the images to be high quality and eye catching as soon as the website visitor hits your home page. People tend to make very quick, snap decisions about things and so if you don’t impress them straight away then they will probably leave pretty quickly.

If you lay your content out in a way that it’s easy to cast the eye over and your images are high quality, ideally from a professional shoot, but if not from a good stock photography website, then you stand a good chance of your website visitor staying to take the time to read your content.

If your images and design don’t look professional it tends to give a DIY feel to a website which can make it feel a bit more like a hobby business website than someone who is taking their business seriously.

If you feel these are areas that could be improved on your own website, then we have a couple of free downloads to help you with these areas of your website, Five Things to Improve Your Website Conversions and Top 10 Recommendations for Free Images.

Copy

Getting your copy right is really important, especially on your home page. Your home page copy needs to really draw in your website visitor. You need to show them that you understand what their problem is or what they need that has brought them to your website. You need to show them that you have a solution that will improve their situation and how they will feel after they have worked with you or used your product. You can also use the homepage to show proof that you have had success with other clients through testimonials.

Make sure you don’t use your homepage as a place to talk all about you and how great you are and your life history that lead to you setting up your company. You can put some of that on your about page, your home page is all about your website visitor.

Make Sure it Actually Works

When someone hits a website that is slow to load, has links that don’t work or doesn’t display well on a mobile they will just leave. Even more frustrating is when they actually like what you do and try to get in touch but your contact form doesn’t work. That leaves a website visitor very disappointed and it really doesn’t say good things about you if you haven’t taken the care to check your website over. Ultimately, it doesn’t say “professional”.

Recommended Actions to Take

• Go and cast a critical eye over your website and see whether you feel you are falling into any of the traps above – if you are take time to rework the areas that need it.
• Test your website on all devices. It might look great on a computer but if it isn’t working well on a mobile you are letting your business down as a majority of browsing is done on mobile devices now.
• If you don’t have a website I really recommend you start the process of planning and creating one as the absence of a website will also be letting your business down.
• Take a look at the free downloads we mentioned and also check out our latest challenge and our courses to help you with some other key changes you can make or to help you plan a new website from scratch.

Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash