What should I put on my website to best sell my services?

This is a question many small business owners ask.

Although a well-designed and attractive website can be a powerful marketing tool, it needs to have the answers your customers are looking for or it just won't convert interested visitors into customers.

Here are some key points we've put together to help you communicate to your potential customers just why your business is the right choice for them:
 

1. WHAT ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS LOOKING FOR?

List all the things your customers are looking for when they visit your website and put these in order of importance. For a restaurant this could be a menu, a phone number and an address. For a builder this could be photos of previous work, a brief introduction to the company & it's history (or values if the company is new) and a contact number to request a quote. For a chiropractor this could be a list of treatments, an address and a phone number. 

For Splash & Co Creative, potential customers visiting our website mostly want to know; 1) How much a new website will cost (all prices are listed in plain view on the "websites", "marketing" and "other services" pages), 2) An idea of what a website designed by us will look like (previous website projects are accessible from the home page), and 3) What the process of a new website involves for them (detailed answers provided in the FAQ section on the "websites" page).

Once you have this list, ensure that your website is structured so these things can be found very quickly. If these are not on the home page, the links to these should be in plain view and absolutely no more than one click away from the home page. The goal is provide a potential customer the answers they are looking for in the shortest possible time to avoid them exiting your website and never returning.
 

2. WHAT DO YOU WANT YOUR CUSTOMERS TO DO?

We request that all of our web design clients list their top 3 desired actions for website visitors. These are the actions that you want the visitor to perform. List these in order of importance. The number one desired action should be evident all throughout your website and be very easy for the website visitor to perform. For example, our number one desired action on the Splash & Co Creative website is for the visitor to contact us for a free consultation. From the moment you land on the home page you will notice there are three call-to-actions (buttons or links that direct the viewer to perform a certain action) that make the act of contacting us extremely easy. There is a large button on the banner that says "request a free consultation" as well as black bar at the top to "speak to one of our website & marketing experts" and a chat box at the bottom right. All 3 of these prompt the visitor to perform the same action, with the chat box and black banner being on every single page of the website. When a business owner interested in having a brand new website lands on our page, they have no trouble whatsoever contacting us.

The other 2 desired actions for our website are to join our newsletter (signup form in the footer of every page on the website) and to view our additional marketing services which are linked throughout the home page and services pages. Again, the goal here is to ensure a potential customer can perform these actions without having to waste time trying to find out how.

3. EXPLAIN IN CLEAR TERMS WHY YOUR BUSINESS STANDS OUT FROM THE COMPETITION.

When writing the copy (text) for your website you should be thinking about why a customer would choose you over the competition. What brings customers back to you? What are they saying when they recommend you to others? Communicate this as quickly as you can. 

Going back to the Splash & Co Creative website, we make it clear from the first time you land on the home page that we create stylish websites that grab (and hold) the attention of website visitors. Our websites feature many graphics and high quality images with an intuitive layout that is designed to guide the users towards the information they seek and the desired actions of the business. 

When you are writing the copy, think about your customers and how choosing your business will serve their best interests. Use examples wherever possible and ask your customers for feedback if it is right to do so. Be clear and concise. Assume the website visitor knows nothing about your business and doesn't have the time to read pages of information.


Following these 3 steps will help you convert more website visitors into customers.

And if you need help designing a new website, or coming up with the content for your site, there is a great company called Splash & Co Creative that can help ;)