Over 80% of small business owners believe they have a competitive advantage over businesses that aren’t online. Here are some simple “tricks of the trade” to make sure you are getting the most from your existing website.
(Please note: This article isn’t focused on making over bad sites, simply tweaking reasonable sites to make them perform better.)
- Firstly don’t try and be all things to all people. Remember who your main target audience is, are you trying to get new clients, or make it easy for existing clients to find what they want. Have a good, hard, look at your website with a fresh pair of eyes. This core decision has a far reaching impact on how you lay out your site, and the type of content you use.
- Use the top right hand corner of your site effectively, this is the most impactful position on your website, so use it for your main call to action.
- Determine your call to action goals and priority, how are you trying to “hold the conversation” are you trying to get the phone to ring more, get people to fill out a contact form, get people to sign up for your newsletters, get people to buy from your site, or simply let people know more about you.
- Studies have shown that the use of the word “get” in a call to action statement lifts the click rate by 10%, eg get started, get a price, etc
- Choose your colour scheme to reflect your industry norms and culture, eg blues are very corporate. The best colours for call to action highlights are orange, followed by green, so if you can blend these into your site naturally that is ideal.
- Put your trust statements “above the fold”, this is the first part of your website that visitors see. Make it impactful with powerful imagery (hero banner), video, and or testimonials or examples of your work/products. In an online sense, this is your “30 second elevator pitch” make it work hard for you.
- You may have heard the UI or UX buzzwords being bandied about. Simply put, you need to put yourself in the shoes of your main target audience, and determine the most intuitive and efficient pathways for them through your website. This is really taking a fresh look at content layout, menu structure, and the number of clicks required to complete an activity on your website. Check out your competitor’s sites to see if they are doing it better than you.
Hopefully there are one or two simple tips here that will help your online performance, if you have all the bases covered already, well done.
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