Tips to Make Your Website Useful
Back in the day, simply seeing a business online, in any fashion, was enough. Nowadays, today’s audiences simply want to get where they are going and the expectations for a website are higher than ever.
We’re going to teach you how to meet those expectations with 3 simple tips and make sure that you are providing your customers with the information they require in the best way possible, to help you make conversions either on your site or in person.
1. Business Contact Info
This is the most important information you can have on your website, and make sure it’s accurate! Seems simple enough, yet many well-intentioned websites make this information difficult to find. Studies show that people will tend to look at the top left corner of your website first, like they’re reading a book. This is where the most important information should be, your contact info—don’t make customers scour the page looking for a way to find your business.
There is a lot of data you can include in the contact information section. The trick is finding the balance of information overload vs. unnecessary vagueness. There are three things you need to specifically include:
- Opening and Operating Hours
People seeking this information are likely close to buying, so having your hours of operation listed accurately and in a fashion that’s easy to read is a huge priority. Here are two examples to showcase how your hours should be listed online:
Example 1:
We are open Mondays – 8:00 am-5:00 pm, Tuesdays – 8:00 am-5:00 pm, Wednesdays – 8:00 am-7:00 pm, Thursdays – 8:00 am-5:00 pm, Fridays – 8:00 am-7:00 pm, Saturdays 12:00 pm-5:00 pm and the service shop is also open until 7:00 pm.
Example 2:
Sales:
Mon 8 – 5
Tues 8 – 5
Wed 8 – 7
Thurs 8 – 5
Fri 8 – 7
Sat 12 – 5
Sun Closed
Service:
Mon-Sat: 12 – 7
Which one did you find easier to read?
We know, the second one. That’s understandable. The second example is a lot easier and clearer to read and find the information you need. The first one easily tires your eyes, it just doesn’t look nice, it’s hard to look at specific days, and you don’t know if the service shop is just open on Saturdays, or if it’s always open until 7:00 pm every evening.
The most important part is to make sure the hours are accurate. Even if it takes an extra line to better explain a confusing set of hours, customers greatly appreciate knowing when they can expect your business to be open.
- Address
Unless you’re an online retailer, your address is an essential part of your contact listing. And just like hours of operation, there are a variety of ways to share your location.
Here is how we recommend it: provide enough information so that Google maps can locate the business. For people in major cities, often times just your street address is sufficient. But if your business is a little tricky to find, consider linking to a map application, or have the map directly on the website. If you’re going that direction, make sure to use an accredited map engine like Google Maps, instead of a hand-drawn creation. People tend to be a lot more familiar with popular map formats and might get confused at the sight of your artwork.
- Mobile and Office Number
This is the number where customers can most easily reach you. Businesses with multiple departments equipped with individual phone lines might want to stick those on a “Contact Us” page. There’s no sense in cluttering your home page with 30 different phone numbers. Businesses should have one phone number on the homepage display to be a catch-all for any inquiries. Don’t forget an area code for those out-of-town customers. Make it easy for on-the-go customers to hit a button and have their mobile device ring the business instantly.
2. The Story Behind Your Business
You likely have a lot to say about your business so the real challenge here is a distillation of your story. Think of the company from the customer’s perspective, ask yourself “What makes you unique? Why are you better than their competitors? What do you do for customers?”. These questions will likely shed light on the most important information to share, at least at the top of the page.
Once you’ve got your most important information cased, consider designing a way for interested customers to learn even more about the business. There you can dive deeper into your history, philosophy, and share any achievements or media coverage your business has had in its past.
3. Business Description
This is where functionality needs to be the highest priority. Customers are looking for confirmation that your business is what they are looking for at the moment they are searching. This information has to be concise, easy to find and extremely helpful. It’s challenging to know the exact right strategy for your business but a tactic we recommend is taking a look at your closest competitors for insight.
Look at those websites and assume the perspective of their customer. If you like something about the way their website works, make a note. If you find something super inconvenient or confusing, again, make a note. Have these notes inform your approach.
And last but not least...
A lot of people think a website should be an online version of your business. In reality, this is virtually impossible. A website is more like a messenger for your business. It’s a tool for relaying information about the business to potential customers. If your messenger is long-winded, confusing and tries to use flashy bright colours to grab attention, the customer is not going to be engaged. If your messenger relays all the information in a simple, concise and memorable way, customers will be much more likely to engage. It is quite likely a website is the first impression the customer might have of your business—remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression.
A useful website is nothing without a high search ranking, here are our SEO must-dos for a higher search ranking. To find out more about SEO and how it can help grow your business, book a consultation now.
Common Local SEO Mistakes That Are Negatively Affecting Your Business
SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, improves your website’s ranking and by doing so can increase traffic to your site. Optimising your SEO strategy is an extremely important part of your web content and any business or digital marketer needs to know the common mistakes and tactics to go around them.
If you want your business to have a good online reputation and your website to create a lot of new leads, attention needs to be given to SEO. And it is especially important for small local businesses to optimise for SEO! Unfortunately, a local SEO strategy isn’t simply creating a website and hoping clients can find it. It isn’t that complicated, but it is quite a time commitment, and you need to know what you’re doing.
Certainly, it is important to know the ways to enhance your SEO but it is just as important to be aware of all the most common mistakes that are made in order to avoid them. A bad SEO strategy could strongly damage your ranking and your business’s presence in search engines.
Here are a few common mistakes:
1. Forgetting your Google My Business Profile
Google My Business is a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps and your business absolutely requires it. When people Google generic businesses like ‘clothing store’ or ‘bakery’ near them, the results that appear at the top of the page in list and map format come from Google My Business. If you want yours to be on the list, you need to set up this profile.
This strategy is a quick and easy win that you can do today. When you set up your Google My Business page, it’s important to fill it out with as much information as possible, and don’t forget to verify your listing; having a great GMB listing represents a significant opportunity for local businesses.
2. Inaccurate Or Missing Listings
NAP, which means Name, Address, and Phone number, is crucial to get right online.
On every source that your business is listed on, the NAP information needs to be the exact same everywhere. Consistency is key. If it’s not listed, you should consider adding it as soon as possible, and if it’s incorrect or outdated, it should be updated right away because potential customers may attempt to reach out to your business, and if they can’t reach you due to wrong information listed, you’ve lost a client.
3. Low Quality Content
If you want to have a good SEO strategy, it’s essential to have original, high-quality content that is consistently reviewed and updated. A weak, repetitive or out-of-date content will have a negative impact on your SEO.
Here is a list of tools to help you better your content:
- Study demic - Make sure to get copywriting guides so you can improve your writing
- Academised – Use online editing tool that will improve the quality of your content and allow you to post more regularly.
- Grammarly – Check your grammar and make sure no mistakes or typos are sneaking in there.
- Paper Fellows – Use online proofreading tools, to help you create and edit documents.
- Via writing – Get help coming up with original content ideas, generating keywords, SEO-friendly titles, descriptions and more.
- Big Assignments – Use formatting tools.
The first thing your potential customer will see on your website is your landing page. If it’s out of date, full of mistakes or irrelevant information, then you’ll not only lose a customer but the quick bounce will negatively affect your rating.
Little tip: Using videos on landing pages can increase conversions by 86%!
4. Irrelevant or Missing Backlinks
A very common mistake is forgetting or disregarding backlinks. This can negatively affect your site and business.
Backlinks are links on another website that direct back to your site and having real and secure backlinks is an important step for SEO because a lot of search engines will give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks. These backlinks can be quite hard to line up for some businesses.
To make it easier, it is worth investing the time and making connections with other businesses that can help. Don’t forget to look for local business listings that work with your area of expertise, or local sites in your region that would accept a guest posting as a trade for a backlink. You can also speak to your suppliers and distributors for a backlink on their websites, and reach out to local media to be used as a source for their stories.
5. Insufficient Local Reviews
Don’t dismiss the importance of reviews on your website. The more good quality reviews you have, the higher your site will rank on searches. Consider developing a system to make sure that you receive a constant stream of reviews that you can publish.
According to Todd Wallace, a well-known digital marketer: “contact customers you’ve had in the past and clients and ask if they can leave a review, send an email to your current client base requesting the same, or post on social media asking for feedback. You should also ask customers to review your business immediately after a visit as a regular follow up.”
In fact, 57% of consumers will only use a business if it has 4 or more stars!
6. Low-Quality Website
The quality and usefulness of your website is one of the factors that Google considers when defining high quality SEO. It’s simple, if a site is of low quality, it won’t get ranked by Google.
They have built-in indicators of poor quality sites like high bounce rates, low conversions, bad design, irrelevant landing pages. Customers who have a good experience on your site will spend longer on it and this will rank your business higher in search engines. And don’t forget mobile optimisation to ensure that visitors who access your website from their phones have an experience optimised for the device. Your focus as a business owner or manager should be growing and improving your business, and not wasting your time optimizing for SEO! With the assistance of SEO experts, develop a good SEO strategy so you don’t need to worry about it as much and focus on what matters.
By avoiding these common mistakes you’ll be able to see your SEO strategy pay off.
Find out more about Local SEO and how it can help grow your business, book a consultation now.