From a high level, most websites are fairly the same. They all talk about your company and the services you provide and have a way for customers to contact you. However, there are 5 things your website needs in order to engage your customers.
5 things your website needs
- Call to Action
- Contact Us
- Security
- Mobile friendly
- Makes your customer the hero
Call to Action
A call to action is something on your website that will make the customer engage with you and contact you in some way. Most websites will have a button somewhere near the top that will tell the customer to contact you now.
You need something to encourage them to take action now and not let it get forgotten. You can add a button that will take your customer to book an appointment or to fill out a contact form right away. You need to create a direct action that creates a clear call to action to buy or book something right away.
Donald Miller in his Storybrand process also suggests that you create a transitional call to action where you give something away for free in exchange. This allows your customer to start a relationship with you before doing any business with you, a test drive if you will.
Here’s my email
You should also have a contact us page. You need a place where your customers can reach out to you and ask for more information. One key to remember is that less is more. The more you ask for, the less likely they respond. So, only ask for the basics, name, email, and phone number.
Security
The first part of security is a valid SSL certificate. This validates the website to the user to ensure they are at the site they think they are at. All hosting companies will sell you a certificate to use for your site but most are now offering free certificates with hosting plans.
Either way, make sure you get a certificate. Next is a website firewall. This will help protect your site against attackers wanting to compromise your site to upload malicious content to get to your customers. A good firewall like WordFence or iThemes Security is very important.
Can I see it on my phone?
Most browsing today is done on mobile devices so make sure your site is responsive, or in other words, it looks good on mobile devices as well as computers and laptops is important. A responsive site will change the sizing of your content based on the device viewing the site. If it is a laptop, most items will be full size if you look at it on a mobile device, then the website automatically scales the objects to the screen size being used. Google now will index files based on their mobile view and not full-screen view now.
Don’t be a hero
Our first thought is that we need to be the hero to our customers but going back to Donald Miller’s Storybrand process, he says that we should be a guide and make our customers the hero. By being a guide, we can be more valuable to our customers.
In fact, your customers are not looking for a hero, they are looking for a guide to help them through the process. To use a Star Wars analogy, be Yoda and not Luke Skywalker.
By ensuring that you have these 5 things your website needs in your website design, you will get more engagement from your customers to lead to more sales. More customer engagement will also help with future customers as Google will bump up your rankings in search results so more customers will discover your website.
If need to add any of the elements to your website and are having problems, feel free to book an appointment with us for a free website consultation today.
