Usherpa Blog - How to make your website a lead generating magnet
Let’s talk websites.
Is Your Website Effective?
Is your website working for you, or is it dead weight? A business website has to have certain features, capabilities, and information in order to be effective. And of course, an effective website is crucial when 97% of consumers and 94% of businesses check your website before making a purchase. Here are some key things your website needs to have:
Mobile responsiveness. More than half of website traffic worldwide happens on mobile devices, so it’s imperative that your website be easy to access via smartphone or tablet, or you’ll lose half your site visitors.
Keep it simple. If your website visitors can’t find what they’re looking for quickly, they may leave. Make sure your navigation is intuitive, your contact information is easy to find, and your site content is lean and focused. More content doesn’t necessarily make for a better website!
Stay up to date. Don’t forget to update your website as things change. Outdated information on your website can confuse business partners and customers, or at least make you look unprofessional.
Know your goals. What is the main thing you want a website visitor to do? Make sure that it’s easy for visitors to take the action that you want them to. A clear call to action is essential to make sure your website is getting results.
Just having a business website isn’t enough. If it isn’t designed to be effective, you may be losing people. Your website should be a clear, easy-to-navigate hub for everything you offer.
Avoid These Website Mistakes
Even the best website managers sometimes make mistakes that kill their site’s success. If you aren’t careful, doing one of these things could send the wrong message to your prospects, customers, and business partners.
Being Cheap
Look, we get it — no one wants to overpay for something they could get for cheap. But when it comes to websites, there’s definitely a “you get what you pay for” element to it. Anyone can pay Wix twenty bucks a month for a drag n’ drop design — which is why your hairdresser uses it for her salon website, and your niece uses it for her Game of Thrones blog, and your neighbors use it for their wedding website. That’s also why they all look the same. That’s not the impression you want to give to a potential customer or business partner!
Going with a budget-friendly option because you think you can “do it yourself” is a recipe for an amateurish, ineffective website. And if the price of a “custom” website from a major design firm sounds too good to be true, it probably is. A good website will earn you money, so you need to be willing to invest in it.
Operating in a Vacuum
Having a great website is key to business success, but that doesn’t mean that a great website will do all the work for you. In order for your site to succeed, you need to know how to drive traffic to it, whether that be by utilizing social media in conjunction with your page, taking advantage of SEO strategies to make your site searchable, building email lists, or ideally all of the above and more.
Your website is a piece of the puzzle, not the whole puzzle. It can only drive business if you create the right environment for it to operate within.
Set It and Forget It
Similarly, a website isn’t a “set it and forget it” solution. Your website needs to be up to date with your latest information to be effective. And while your design and organization might seem perfect now, you should keep an eye on each part of your site over time to make sure you couldn’t be doing anything better. If a button isn’t performing well, different wording, placement, or color could make a difference. Do you find that people are often emailing you with a question that your website already answers? Maybe that answer needs to be moved or rewritten. These kind of updates should be happening constantly — your website should be a living, growing document in order to always serve your visitors well.
But even if your website can lie dormant for a long time without misrepresenting your business, how often the site is updated can impact SEO scores, which is why updating it regularly with blogs, press releases, etc. is just as important. You can’t just set your website up once and then sit back and wait for it to do your job for you. Websites require constant upkeep and maintenance to succeed.
Thanks for reading! Now, go tackle all those website changes you’ve been meaning to make.
