Building a successful website that works
Getting the content on your website to flow and read correctly is so important. In the past we have found that clients have a clear idea as to the design, colours and fancy, eye-candy bits of their website but when it comes down to content and how it’s displayed it can be a bit of a stumbling block.
In this blog we have put together a list of the most important content to consider when thinking about your website.
What do you do?
What is it that you sell or what service do you offer? This is one of the more important aspects to your website – mostly because your potential customer or client needs to know what you do as soon as they land on your website – you could have the fanciest website in the world but without this simple yet crucial homepage paragraph – whether you keep it to the point in a couple of sentences, or elaborate on your product/service; it is important to include.
Who are you?
When your potential customer or client visits your website they do like to know who they are dealing with. The sort of information you should consider when writing your “about us” page includes your experience, any provenance that connects you or your business to your products/services, a brief history of your company, your knowledge and what distinguishes you from your competitors – if those visiting your site won’t necessarily read page after page of text, so try and keep it short and sweet, and most of all to the point.
Service? product?
The next step is the most important – the very reason your website has visitors – to look at your products or service(s). It is important to keep this information as clear, to the point and include the information that your customers would want to know – even putting yourself into your customers shoes … think back to a time when you have purchased a product or service online – what information did you look for? What did you want to know about the product/service you were interested in purchasing? If you do this and view your website through the eyes of your visitor when compiling your service / product content, it should be a breeze!
Let’s see the images!
Images … Pictures … Pics – whatever you choose to call them are SO important. This gives your customer a visual of what they are purchasing (If it’s a product) or what they can expect from you if offering a service to them. Remember that your Gallery is one of (if not THE) most important aspect to your website – after all you are only as good as your portfolio or the products you sell, so make sure you choose your best images/products to show off.
What’s YOUR number?
This part of your website – the Contact Us page – is also really important if you want to stand any chance of gaining a sale or new business! At the very least you should include your contact telephone number, your email address or a contact feedback form – generally it’s a better idea to use a contact form for two reasons – it prevents spam mail and makes it easy for your customers to contact you there and then, directly from your website without having to mess about opening up email.
Let’s get social
Online Marketing is so important nowadays – it is used to communicate in a more relaxed/informal way to all your customers, whether it’s a special offer, new service, new product or pretty much anything else that your customer will appreciate – even off-topic tweets or Facebook posts like interesting facts, “Did you know?” type information or newsworthy items can entice both new and existing customers to check back regularly.
Well hosted
The final point is more technical than aesthetic, however you need to consider your website and email hosting; is it fast and reliable? Does your hosting provider include backups? Are your emails reliable? All these questions and more should be addressed before deciding upon the right hosting plan.
If, on the other hand, you pay £1 a month for low-cost hosting it might be cheap, but can have a huge detrimental effect on your website long-term. Good quality hosting is a must, especially in today’s world where everything is done at such a fast pace.
If your website is slow to load, intermittent or going down (meaning that the hosting encounters problems and your website and/or email goes offline – or goes down) you will find your customers hot-footing it off to another website that will load faster, so be aware of this small, but important factor.
