Your website is more than just the facade or storefront for your business. In fact, today’s businesses are discovering that in some ways, an effective website is even more important than the physical appearance of your business. Customers often see your website before they see your storefront, and in fact, they may interact more with your website than they do with any other facet of your business. If you’re hoping to improve your website and enhance its effectiveness for your business, try out a few critical tips.
1. Make Your Website User-Friendly
If you’re selling a technology-based product or complicated services, you may be tempted to share huge amounts of information with potential customers. Huge amounts of information is fine–but that doesn’t mean that your website should be complicated to understand or difficult to use. A clean, simple design can go a long way toward improving customers’ appreciation of your website.
Make it easy to find critical information. Your contact information, customer reviews, and frequently asked questions section should all be readily accessible from the front page. You want customers to be able to go straight to those critical facts without having to spend time digging through other pages first.
Reduce or eliminate pop-ups entirely. Pop-up ads can be a great way to draw attention to critical announcements, new promotions, or other critical information. They can also be very frustrating or distracting for website users, especially mobile viewers. Keep your pop-ups to a bare minimum and only use them when you must in order to keep your visitors happy.
Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly. Today, increasingly more individuals are doing their online research and shopping with mobile devices. They aren’t logging on with desktops or laptops; they’re using tablets and phones on the go. Mobile-responsive design will keep new users from clicking straight to the next site in their search results before they even have a chance to see what you’re offering.
2. Supply Engaging Content to Keep Visitors Interested
For many companies, especially those with high-priced items and customers who must be wooed with more than just the lowest price in the industry, it’s critical to supply more than just a bare-bones website. Your entire website should be shaped around the goal of enhancing customer engagement, which means providing them with content they can connect to.
Make sure your website reflects your company’s message. Are you dedicated to convenience and accessibility? Is it your mission to provide technology to the people who need it? Make sure that everything about your website reflects that core message and set of goals.
Use your blog as effectively as possible. Your company’s blog is the perfect opportunity to communicate with your customers. You want to provide as much value as possible in every post. Your blog will establish you as an authority in your field, building up your reputation as well as increasing traffic for important keywords. Your blog is also a great place to talk about what your company is doing: any charitable contributions you’ve made, upcoming promotions, or other important information for your clients. Use your blog as an ongoing message to all of your clients, and make sure that you post regularly to help bring in more traffic as well as letting your readers know when to anticipate more information.
Don’t forget your call to action. Whether you’re writing a blog post or a key content page for your website, make sure to incorporate a call to action for your clients. Posts with calls to action are more likely to bring a response from your customers, encouraging them to contact you for more information, check out your product offerings, or even make a purchase. Try to create a sense of urgency in your call to action for the best results.
3. Be Clear About Your Goals
Understanding your goals and your target audience is one of the first steps in effective website design, but it’s also an ongoing process. As your business grows, you will experience a changing customer dynamic that calls for regular updates to your website and the information provided there. Setting it out from the beginning, however, will help you create the engaging content your customers need.
Identify your customer base. Who are you hoping to market to? What are they looking for? For example, a medical supply company that provides walkers or braces for children is marketing to parents. Proving that they offer the most comfortable products for their children is critical to their marketing. A company that markets to seniors, on the other hand, may need to start by addressing budget concerns or offering assistance navigating the process with an insurance company.
Decide what you want your site to accomplish. Are you out to increase a certain type of visitor? To make connections that ultimately become customers? To nurture current customers so that they become more dedicated to your brand? Once you understand your website goals, you’ll be better able to implement them.
Analyze customer interactions to improve the effectiveness of your site. You should constantly be evaluating important data from your website: who is visiting? What are they looking at? How long are they remaining on your webpage before they move on? As you understand this critical data, you can improve your customers’ experience with your website.
4. Invite People to Become Part of a Community
People are more likely to return to your website for all their future needs if they feel like part of a community. Your website should offer that sense of community. Invite people to feel as though they belong. An effective marketing strategy draws in new customers and makes them feel like part of the “family” as soon as possible.
Offer a rewards program. It doesn’t have to be elaborate to inspire loyalty. A simple points system can bring people back to your website for all of their future purchases in your field simply because they know that they’re accumulating more points, often in an industry that they need to visit frequently.
Add incentives for referrals. There’s no faster way to help people feel like part of a community than offering them incentives for bringing in others. Your incentive could be as simple as a percentage or dollar amount off of their next purchase: just enough to make it worth their while to bring in others who share their needs. As a bonus, this is inexpensive marketing that you only have to pay for if it pays off!
Don’t forget social media opportunities. Integrating your website with your social media accounts is a great way to develop a sense of community. Your social media sites are a great way to engage with your users. You can answer their questions, accept customer reviews, and encourage social media shares that will help bring in new members of the community.
A properly-designed website will go a long way toward enhancing customer engagement, bringing them in and convincing them that your business is the best place for them to acquire the materials or services you’re offering. If you need help designing your website, contact us! We’ll help develop a website that is dedicated to taking care of all of your customers’ needs, bringing them into your community, and appropriately reflecting your mission and your brand.
