Get Realistic About Your Website
If you’re a small business there are two things that are undeniably true - you need a website and it needs to be easy to maintain.
Approximately 80% of consumers search online before before interacting directly with a business. If your website is old, out of date or uninformative, you’ll lose chance to capture those customers. So how do you make sure that you put your brand out there in a professional way?
1. Keep it Simple
You don’t need a whizz-bang, award winning website to be successful. Most small businesses can get away with 1-3 pages that tell your story, explain your product or service and provide a way for customers to get in contact with you. There are a number of great web platforms that are simple to use and ready-made templates that you can customise to fit your needs. This simplicity is going to make it easy to keep your website up-to-date and useful to potential customers. If you need an online store there are straight-forward platforms you can use (like SquareSpace and Shopify) that allow you to connect your website and storefront.
2. Know your story
You need to be clear on what your story is. Why you do what you do, what you want to achieve. Having messaging like this documented will make it easier to write, or brief someone else to write, your website content. People buy from someone they trust. The way you build trust is to be authentic and have a reason behind what you do.
3. Build Trust
To help potential customers feel confident to work with you, you need to build trust. There are a few different ways you can do this. First and foremost you should use professional photos and media that include yourself or your business. Stock footage is ok as a stop-gap but I always recommend setting aside some budget for photography or videos. Collect customer reviews and testimonials and display them on your website. Display your credentials such as qualifications or industry standing. The key here is authenticity so keeping it REAL is the key.
4. Make information easy to find
You need to have clear navigation and information. I should be able to land on your website and immediately see who you are, what you do and how I can contact you if I decide to do so. What you want me to do should be immediately obvious e.g. call you, book an appointment etc. I should be able to scan all of this in a matter of seconds - yep it’s that fast.
5. Keep it fresh
If you establish a website that is easy to use and clear you should have an easy time keeping it up to date. I look at my website every two weeks and assess how it’s performing, what might not be clear and whether I need to add any extra clarity. I like to write a blog once a week so this is a great opportunity to, while I’m in my platform, to review my analytics and see how pages are performing. Then I can make content tweaks or adjust my SEO setup.
Keeping your website fresh and easy to navigate will help you attract customers. By setting things up well at the beginning you can make things easier for yourself. Then all you need to do is block out an hour or two a month to review it and make any updates.