You already know that having a website is pretty much mandatory these days. But if your website isn’t helping you get clients and/or customers, why bother having one?
Here are a few things you must know to make having a website worthwhile.
1. What Your Customers And/Or Clients Want To Know
What will people be looking for when they come to your site?
They’ll be looking for how this website can benefit them. And then, if they like what they find, they’ll be looking for more information.
This is very important.
People must be able to see how you can help them within a few seconds.
If they have to poke around and figure it out, they’re not going to bother.
They’ll leave your site and move on to something else. All the advice about putting important information “above the fold” and minimizing the amount of clicks needed to navigate your website stems from this.
If you run a restaurant, people will want to know what kind of food you serve, where you’re located, your hours, and whether or not they need to make reservations. If you’re a designer, they’ll want to see your work. If you’re a coach, they’ll want to know what you can help them with and will probably be looking for testimonials from previous clients.
No matter what you do, people will want to know prices and have a way to contact you.
Make sure what you do or sell and how it helps people is very clear to anyone who comes to your website, and make it easy for them to find the information they’ll be looking for.
2. How To Guide Your Website Visitors
If you make it clear how you can help, the people who want that kind of help will start to explore your website.
This is when things like email list sign up boxes, links to your services/products, testimonials, and lists of featured or popular blog posts come into play.
But you must keep things simple.
What pages or areas of your website are most important? Emphasize those.
Put them in the main menu, make them the most prominent items in your website layout, and have clear calls to action pointing to those things.
This is what people mean when they tell you to be strategic with your website.
If you want people to sign up for your newsletter, don’t make your blog the main focus of your website. (Unless you have a newsletter sign up box in the side bar and at the bottom of each post. Then you could emphasize your blog because it will likely lead to people signing up for your newsletter.)
If you want people to buy your products, you must make it clear that you have products for sale. Putting a Store link in your main menu is a start, but what about putting images and descriptions of your best selling products on your home page? Or in the sidebar of your blog? Or mentioning them in blog posts?
And make sure you have clear calls to action.
You must make it clear what you want people to do or they won’t do it.
3. How To Get Traffic
Once you make it clear how you can help people, and know how to guide then to the right place(s) on your website, it’s time to get people coming to it. The best website in the world is useless if no one visits it.
There are many ways to get traffic.
- writing guest posts for other people’s websites
- letting people guest post on your website
- being interviewed
- interviewing other people
- hosting a podcast
- going on someone else’s podcast
- posting links to your website on social media (Just remember you have to interact with people too!)
- buying ad space on a website your potential clients/customers visit
- hosting a contest or giveaway
- donating your products/services as a prize in someone else’s contest or giveaway
- learning basic SEO to get traffic from search engines
- making a video and posting it on YouTube with a link to your website
Need more ideas? Think Traffic is a great website for learning how to get people coming to your website. Start with this post: 42 Timeless Ideas For Attracting More Visitors To Your Website
There you have it, three things you must know to get results from your website.
What people will be looking for when they come to your website, how to guide them, and how to get people coming to your website in the first place.
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The post 3 Things You Must Know To Get Results From Your Website appeared first on Sharise Mershon.