9 Fundamentals You Need for a High Converting Website
Your website is your storefront. In many cases, it provides a prospect’s first impression of your company. You know what they say about first impressions; you can only make one and it better count.
The good news is that keeping in mind a few fundamentals and making a few simple tweaks to your website can take it from bland to brilliant. You can create a website that attracts visitors, converts clients, and helps you build a prosperous and exciting business.
Start with the basics:
Invitation To Friend/Follow On Social Media
Social media is more than a trend or a tactic that you can use to build an audience. It’s as essential for most industries as a website itself. And merely having a social media “presence” isn’t enough; you have to let people know you’re active on social media by inviting them to interact.
If you have a WordPress site, there are simple plugins you can use to add social follow buttons.
Professional Quality Logo/Header
The world of Internet marketing is vast and competitive. While you can create your own blog header, you should probably leave it to the professionals unless you happen to be a design whiz. Make an investment in your brand and your business by creating a strong and relevant header and logo to represent your business.
Easy To Navigate
It’s frustrating to land on a site and not be able to find what you want. Most people will just click away. Make sure your visitors can find their way around your website quickly and easily.
If you’re uncertain about how to accomplish this, then study websites that you visit often. Notice how they guide you through the site. Do they provide relevant and easy to recognize navigation tabs? Does the flow of the site seem logical? Is there a search function so you can head directly to the page or information you’re looking for?
Fresh and Relevant Content
The single most important thing you can do to transform from bland to brilliant is to create the best content possible. Fresh content means that your content is recent as well as on topic.
Don’t create content about something that happened five years ago or even five months ago. Create content about what’s going on right now. Relevant content varies depending on your niche and your audience.
The most important thing to remember when contemplating what makes something relevant is what your audience is talking about right now. Here’s how to know.
Search Field
This goes along with being easy to navigate – it’s important to make your site fully usable by anyone who visits. One of the simple tools you can use to make this happen is a simple search field.
There are different search plugins you can use or it may be included in your WordPress template. Maybe you want people to be able to search for tips on your site. You can use this tool to add functionality to your website and to help separate your business site from your competition.
Contact Form
What do you want people to do when they’re at your site and they have a question? You might already have an FAQ page (hopefully you do), but what if the answer to a visitor’s question isn’t on that page?
Ideally, you want your visitor to be able to reach out and ask their question. This keeps them engaged and connected to your business. To make this happen, it has to be easy for them to contact you.
One of the simplest ways to accomplish this is to have a contact form on your site. They enter their email address, subject line, and ask their question. You or your virtual assistant receives the message and can promptly respond.
This form is usually set up through your email marketing system or a WordPress plugin.
A Newsletter
Email marketing is still one of the most powerful means to connect with your prospects, build relationships and make sales. However, your email newsletter has to be valuable. Make sure it provides different value than your website content. And separate that content so that newsletter subscribers receive unique value.
Optimized Sign Up Offer
How do you motivate people to sign up for your newsletter? A great sign up offer can do the trick. There are many options to consider. You can give away a free report or ebook. You can provide a free online tutorial, video series, or access to behind the scenes audio recordings.
Create a fabulous offer to motivate subscribers and publish that offer in a prominent location on your website. Experiment to see what type of opt-in form works best. Some people have great luck with pop-ups, while others find that the upper right-hand corner of their website works best.
About Page
Your “About” page can include a number of pieces of information. Consider including information about your company’s vision and mission. You can also include your bio and the bio or any team members. You can also include the company history and your purpose.
These are basic elements of a webpage that converts. In a future blog post, I will talk about some of the other elements you should consider.