Your Website, your online presence and stamp on the Internet is quickly becoming vitally important, regardless of your company’s size or industry. This is because the Internet as an advertising and marketing medium is advancing at a rapid pace.
It’s continuously opening up new access points such as your customers being able to view your site whenever they want by using their mobile devices. With this growth of mobility, due mainly to the popularity of smartphones, tablet PCs and Wi-Fi, consumers now has the ability to instantly compare your site or even worse, your competitors site instantly.
So what this means is that you need to develop an engaging eye catching website, which can become your most useful and vital sales tool. Essentially, your site is becoming your online virtual business card. And just like your regular business card, there are some key features which you should put on it to make it stand out.
What you have is an extremely short window of opportunity to grab a potential customers attention when they somehow land on your website, and they begin to immediately scan and evaluate it.
They’ll almost instantly decide within a fraction of a second if they want to stay and see or hear more about your site and your business, or move on. This judgement is based on just glancing at your home page or the page that they happen to land on.
Today’s sites on the Internet are more than just simple landing pages on the net to list your businesses name and address. You need to immediately interact with your customer before they reach out to you. That compelling site needs to grab you that lead or that second look so they’ll stay. So here are a few tips on how you can do just that:
How Your Website Can Grab Instant Attention
• Make Sure That Your Sending The Right Message
A good compelling traditional business card shows your visitor that you’re the perfect fit for them. Your website needs to portray the same feeling, giving each and every potential customer or client the confidence that your business is able to solve their problem.
To ensure that this happens, take a small step back and then determine what your initial “first impression” of your company’s message is. This includes your logo, your branding, the descriptive content and the overall design. They should all be melding together to be able to create that single impression as well as an engaging users experience.
• Sticking To The Point
At times, web designers can easily get distracted and get caught up in creating an overly flashy, “lights blinking everywhere,” extravaganza of a site when using various design elements.
This can cause your primary message to get completely lost in all the noise. So be simple and straightforward instead, portray what your business does and why you’re the best qualified to earn their business.
Keep in mind that it doesn’t matter one iota if your site is the most entertaining or the most sparkling out there. What drives home is that your customers instantly understands your message.
When utilized correctly, those cool funky features can still be incorporated into the design, but you shouldn’t over weigh its value by overbearing your initial message. Use it to draw in customers, but never overload them.
• Using An Easy Effective Content Management System
There aren’t many sites these days that will have just one single static content page as their homepage and just left there and never update it. There’s really no point when constructing a site, not being able to easily edit or update it on a regular basis.
So without a good Contact Management System, businesses will fall victim to their web developers who will “nickel and dime” them for making every minor change to the site. These small website changes, if left to the mercy of others, the costs can add up rather quickly.
So make sure that you use a proven and reliable CMS, such as the WordPress platform. Anyone will then be able to quickly as well as instantly make any changes to the site, such as adding new content, products or articles. This way, your customers will always be kept completely up to date when anything in your business changes.
• Keeping Your Content Unique Relevant And Current As Possible
Since you now have the ability to instantly make changes on your site, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will. It’s extremely important that you periodically make updates and changes to your site.
Not only does it keep your customers completely informed on all of the recent changes in your company, but it also positions you as an expert in your field.
Features such as blog posts, unique product articles or breaking news will promote more conversation and interaction with your customers, allowing you to constantly demonstrate your knowledge of your particular field.
• Providing Easy Navigation
Business cards or brochures are meant to highlight and display all of the key points which you have to offer, including your “About Me” and your contact information.
Your customers should be able to locate this information easily as well as quickly as possible. So make sure that your website offers easy consistent navigation, eye grabbing headlines, flowing themes and blending colors to help your users know exactly where they’re at while on your site.
New visitors will want to find all of the basic pages and information such as the “company or product” history or the “contact us” pages. So make sure that this type of information is available up front. If it’s hidden somewhere inside the site, your customers may then just simply move on to a competitors website.
• Become Mobile Friendly
Mobility isn’t going anywhere, it’s growing and gaining momentum. A lot more of your customers are checking your site directly from a mobile device, so you need to make sure that your website is able to adapt.
It just takes a second for a potential customer to first hear about your business, look up your site on their smartphone, and then realize that it isn’t mobile friendly, and will then immediately move on. Converting your site to be mobile friendly can be an easy and cost effective process.
Remember, potential customers who are sifting through a stack of business cards are looking for a reason to get rid of the ones which they don’t want. So don’t allow your outdated or poorly structured site which isn’t mobile friendly to be the reason why they decide to skip over your site.
Your site isn’t obviously doing its job, so consider making the proper improvements. It may just involve a few minor tweaks to change your current site to an engaging hot sales tool.
Whether you’re starting a brand new site from scratch or just upgrading your current one, make sure that you tailor it to fit the needs of your customer.