If you’ve poured your heart, soul and marketing budget into building a schmick and fancy website but the phone still isn’t ringing, there’s ONE thing you might have missed.
But before we look at that, let’s look at the non-negotiables you need for a website that can build relationships with your target market and encourage an audience to take action.
- Quick to load
Websites that are slow and clunky will have website visitors clicking on your competitor’s online offering before the page has even loaded. Why? Because internet surfers have options. If someone can’t see your site immediately, they will go somewhere they can.
Optimise the load time for your web page to ensure you keep visitors who will bring in revenue through sales. In a survey conducted by Unbounce in 2019, 50% of website visitors said they could do without the videos and animations as long as they got the images and content quickly so they could make a purchasing decision. And a whopping 70% said that the load time impacted their decision to buy from a site.
- Effective relationship-building website copy
There is nothing wrong with website copywriting that focuses on the specifications of a product. People need this information to make comparisons and decisions. But it is cold. On the other hand, a website copywriter who can build a relationship with your potential client in around 300 words or less is gold.
Effective and engaging website copy is like having a salesperson talking directly to your customers, reassuring them and building a relationship that will have them coming back year after year because they trust you.
A good website copywriter will understand your audience.
Anyone can list the attributes of a product, but it takes a particular skill to build a relationship with the client through words on a page. The best relationship-building website copywriters appeal to the emotions of the customers, discover their pain points and provide them with the perfect solution – you!
- Engaging imagery
We all know the saying, ‘a picture is worth 1000 words’. To engage internet viewers, you need imagery that entices them into the site and that aligns with their interests and lifestyle aspirations.
Most importantly, engaging imagery gives customers the visual information they need to purchase. Imagine trying to buy a pair of shoes purely from a description in words alone.
- Call to action (CTA)
Make those call-to-action buttons obvious, and place them at various points in your product description. Give your customers options to purchase at multiple points. Someone who has bought a particular brand before wants to get to the size and colour choice, and bam, the decision is made. They don’t need to know the exact type of material it is made from and scroll through the fluff about the product before finding the CTA button. They know what they want.
New customers may take a bit longer and read through some or all of the specs for a product before hitting the ‘purchase now’ button. Having multiple CTA buttons keeps their interest, and they may make more purchases, especially if you have a ‘frequently bought with’ selection to increase their order value.
The ONE reason your website is letting you down
If you’ve done everything listed but you’re not getting customers through your digital door, the most vital part of your website that is often overlooked in our obsession with automation is a company telephone number.
A phone number with a human at the end to answer queries should appear on every single page of the website in TWO places. In bold print at the top right and at the bottom of the page – also in bold print.
Far too many websites hide the information on the last page under the ‘Contact us’ section – and even then, customers have to read the fine print to find the telephone number. Most people who are in the decision-making stage don’t want to wait for the customer service team to respond to the form they have filled in. They want instant answers from a real person. The standard auto-response to most contact forms is vague and impersonal and doesn’t answer your ideal customers’ questions while they’re still a hot lead.
Want to increase sales? Put your telephone number on every page, and make sure someone is there to answer the phone, book those appointments, reassure customers on specific technical points, and build a relationship that will have them returning year after year because they received top-notch customer service.
Many people are becoming tired of the distance created between them and the company through digital processes and our quest for automation.
Your website is how people find you. Your level of accessibility and personal contact is how you tun them into your customer.
