Is Your Website the Best Restaurant on the Busiest Street?
Think of your website like a restaurant. You may serve incredible meals but without a nice ambiance you won't be attracting anywhere near the amount of customers you should be. A great website is the ambiance of your business and a website optimised for SEO is like owning a restaurant on the busiest street in town.
So, let's take a look at this analogy further and how it relates to your website...
Location
Say your restaurant is located on a quiet street with little traffic. You can't expect customers to just stumble upon it on their own.
Similarly, if your website isn't ranking high on search engines you can't expect it to generate much traffic. All Splash websites are optimised to rank as high as possible on search engines, but still it can take time to get to the top. Especially if you are competing against other businesses that have spent years building up their search ranking.
So, how can you let potential customers know about your website? Advertising on Facebook and Google are both great ways to help spread the word. With Google Adwords you can reach potential customers right when they need your product or service and by using Facebook Lead Ads you can collect information from people interested in becoming your customer.
Ambiance
Have you ever been in a new town looking for a place to eat? Say you're walking down a busy street and observing the restaurants as you go, trying to decide which one to eat at. What helps you make your decision? Usually it's the ambiance that first gets your attention, followed by the menu.
Did you know that when someone lands on your website you have on average only 3 seconds to get their attention before you risk them leaving your site? Just like with restaurants, if your website doesn't have a good ambiance, you can say goodbye to most of this traffic. This is why it's extremely important to have a professionally designed website. It may cost more upfront but it will more than pay for itself in the long run.
Menu
You've got your location and ambiance sorted. You are getting lots of foot traffic as people come in to check out your menu. What could go wrong now? Unfortunately, if your menu isn't enticing, you still have a chance of losing customers.
The same goes for your website. Think of your home page as the menu in a restaurant. It needs to be designed in a way that shows off your products/services and entices visitors to stay a little longer, or even better, request a table!
It also needs to cater to people at all different stages of the buying cycle. Some website visitors may not know much about your business or know what you offer, while other visitors may be your 'regulars' returning to a certain part of your website quickly and efficiently. It's extremely important that it's designed in a way that points visitors in the right direction, no matter what stage in the buying cycle they are at.
Most people can understand what makes a great restaurant, yet they feel overwhelmed when it comes to websites. The concepts are all so new and things seem to change quickly. But really, it's not that different to establishing a great restaurant. Focus on getting these 3 concepts right: your location (search ranking), ambiance (design) and menu (home page and site navigation), and your website will be thriving in no time!