We all agree that a business needs a website!
Your business needs more than just a website, but a website that converts visitors into clients and customers.
If you build a website that converts, it can instantly increase your revenue in a significant way. It can change your entire business in a second, moving it from a struggling small business to a successful one.
Why Your Business Needs a Website
Though most business owners know and understand that it might be good to have a website for their businesses, most of them don’t know what goes into building a high-converting website, and therefore, they never realize the true benefits they can reap.
What normally happens is a business hires a freelancer or web design company to build a site that features their logo, name, products or services and contact information and then they are done. There is no strategy, no clear KPIs or ways to measure if their website’s design and content are enticing customers to purchase their products or services. It is just a way for them to be on the internet.
This is the wrong way for a business to operate. With a clear strategy, a website can be found by customers seeking specific products and services. If those customers like what they see on your website, they will easily purchase your offerings, call your business to hire your services, or opt-in to your mailing list—whatever you’re targeting them to do.
You can have landing pages on your site that capture leads and encourage sales, you can promote your social media pages and so much more. The opportunities are endless, but the bottom-line remains—you need a good website before any of this will happen.
What is a Website that Converts
What does it mean to have a website that converts?
In simple terms, it is a website that easily sells your products or services to customers or gets them to respond in a way that you’re targeting. That could simply be to subscribe to your email list or download your digital content. It gets your site visitor’s attention and generally convinces them to call or click, and deliver their contact information, somehow. This enables you to pursue them to close the deal if it hasn’t already been done. Your conversion rate signifies the percentage of visitors that take action on whatever you place in front of them. Some of these things we mentioned above. A conversion rate is unique to each business.
Components of a Good Website
Good foundation – hosting, domain and plugins
Your website’s conversion rate begins with a good foundation. That foundation is your domain, hosting, web design platform, theme or code, and plugins.
Having a good domain is an easy way to rank well in search engines. For example, if you have a hair salon in Austin, Texas, a good domain would be hairsalonaustin.com or something similar. Most businesses don’t have the option to use a domain so similar to their names, so anything that relates to your business that is easy to remember is a safe bet.
Your hosting account holds your domain. Think of the domain as the house and the host as the land. Without a proper hosting account, your website will not function well. This dictates the bandwidth, storage space and other things that make your website perform seamlessly.
If you have a domain or website host that is sub-par, the biggest problem with that is that your site will load slowly. No-one wants to wait for a website to load.
Beautiful web design
The first thing a visitor notices on your website is the design. Your website is your home-base on the internet. Would you invite someone into your house if it isn’t tidy and organized? The same goes for your website. You must ensure that it is not cluttered, that the colors and fonts match, and that the site flows easily. The design should be consistent throughout and the text should be easy to read.
The home page of your website is your most visited page, and therefore the most important. If you can’t convince people to take action from this page, your website will underperform.
Theme
If you’re using WordPress for your website, the theme you use should be one that fits the niche or industry you are in. If you have a football academy, a theme for photography may not be suitable for your website. There are many free themes available but it makes sense to purchase a high-quality theme if you want to stand out and communicate that your business is of a high standard to your visitors. Themes are also easy to customize so you can make changes as you see fit.
Code
For most small business applications, it is not necessary to build or code a website from scratch anymore, but many web developers still prefer to do so. While this may make sense for some, it is the most expensive way to build a website. If you do this, you’ll need to keep a developer close by to ensure all updates are made, and when they, they will also ensure nothing is broken. You do not need a custom-coded site to have a custom-designed site.
Easy Navigation/User-friendly
One of the most frustrating things visitors complain about is a website that is hard to navigate. Your visitors shouldn’t have to search for things such as how to contact you or where to find your blog. Everything needs to be clearly visible and easy to find. Buttons, links, and designs that work well on many different screen sizes are important.
Search Engine Optimization
Everyone wants to know “how to rank #1 on Google”. Building a website that is search engine optimized or is search engine friendly is extremely important. Many web designers can build a website that looks great, and is user friendly but doesn’t rank very well. This doesn’t make any sense unless you’re running tons of ads, and want to keep running ads. Every website that we design and build includes keyword research and a solid SEO foundation. SEO is one of the things that a cheap website is lacking. The business owner purchasing the new website or design never notices this because most SEO work is on the backend of your website and unless you know what you’re looking for you won’t recognize what your website is missing.
Responsive Design
As of 2018, more than 50% of website traffic is generated from mobile phones. When you create a website, you must ensure that it has a responsive design so that the mobile version looks just as good as the desktop version, and that it provides similar navigation. Your content should also look attractive on all screen sizes. Many websites today are still not mobile compatible. Google actually flags your site as “not mobile-friendly” and lowers your rank in search engines because of this.
Conversion-focused design
Conversion-focused design relates to the way your content is laid out on your website. Your pages, copy, images and all other content must align to entice your website visitors to perform the ultimate task—whatever that is for you and your business. You need to clearly lead users to your offer. If this is done correctly your website will be a continual lead generator.
Call to Action
Every website with a high-conversion rate has good CTAs (call to action). ‘Download my book’, ‘sign up for my email list’ are things you’ve seen before. These are some of the most common CTAs and they clearly tell the website visitor what you want them to do. You want to ensure that your CTAs are strategically placed at points where the visitor is most likely to obey that instruction. This can significantly increase your website’s conversion rate.
Building an email list
A website that converts almost always has an email list and a CTA working together to grow that email list. It is with this list that you’ll be able to communicate with your subscribers and tell them when you’ve published a new blog post, put new products in your store and just about anything you want to add that’s of value.
Be sure to only contact your subscribers when you have something of value to offer. It’s hard to get them to subscribe, but easier to get them to opt-out of your list. By continuing to email relevant content to your subscribers, you’ll keep them engaged as well as keeping you in the front of their minds for referrals as well. Good emails also make great shareable content, so your audience can be selling your products and services, too!
What are you waiting for?
Now that you know what goes into building a website that converts, it’s time to get cracking. Your website builder, web developer or web designer, whatever you call them, should implement the mentioned strategies if you want your website to be successful.
At evlos digital, we believe that your website should be attracting clients, or something is missing. Having the right copy, search engine optimization, and good design are important, but so are many other things. Don’t make the same mistake as others.
Reach out to us today and let us know how we can help.
