Developing an effective website for your business is a huge task! You must focus on design, visibility, user flow, copy, navigation, photos, and so much more.
With so many important elements making up a high preforming business website it’s easy to get overwhelmed. It’s easy to get lost along the way, especially if you don’t have a well-defined plan. It can be easy to leave out elements that are crucial to the success of every website.
Websites change from industry to industry, but there at 6 major goals every website must accomplish when a user lands on it. Every one of these goals is extremely important in order to gain trust, build interest, capture leads, and convert leads into sales.
Below were going to identify each of these 6 goals, and teach you exactly how to execute them. You only have a few seconds to grab the attention of your users, we’re going to give you the tools to make them count.
1. Establish Your Brand
Your brand personality, or the “who” behind your company, is one of the most important factors that drives user engagement. Establishing your brand is one of the most essential parts of building a business that stands out in your industry, so your website needs to do this early and often.
A brand can be established throughout all aspects of your websites content. Emphasizing a certain voice while describing your services or product can have huge effects. Custom photos and imagery is one of the best ways to show your users exactly “who” you are as a company. Don’t under value the About page, use it to tell people exactly what you want them to know about your business.
Whether you’re a family-owned carpet cleaning company or a cutting-edge technology company, your website users want to know you. Providing your users with authentic information about your brand will make them trust you, and more willing to work with you.
2. Explain the “Why” Behind Your Brand
The internet has changed everything about how consumers interact with companies, and who they decide to do business with. Seemingly unlimited choice is great for the consumer, but can be difficult for the business. In the digital age, your company now has more competition than ever before.
In order to succeed you have to stand out from the competition. Your website must answer “Why Us” and establish exactly why your ideal customer should hire you. Web visitors should know why your services are the best choice for them immediately. If your web copy doesn’t communicate “this is what we do, this is how we do it, and this is who we do it for” your precious website traffic will be bouncing off your site as fast as they can hit the back button.
3. Drive Social Media Traffic
Simple, but extremely important. Social media links on your website are a great way to build your businesses trust and legitimacy with new users. Sites that don’t have social links can cause site visitors to think you don’t have social profiles. This simple mishap can cause potential leads to trust you less, and result in many missed opportunities for social followers. Social media is one of the most cost-effective ways to connect with your target audience.
Social sharing links don’t have to be in your face or spammy. Simple footer links, or a side bar widget will get the job done. Monarch is a great social sharing plugin that can be easily integrated with any WordPress website. Regardless of how you share your social profiles with your site visitors, it is an important step that can’t be overlooked.
4. Send Users Deeper Into Your Website
Many sites are doomed to fail from the start because of improper navigation and user flow planning. Your website needs to act as a sales person for your organization, driving users to deeper levels of content that speaks directly to them. Customers simply won’t dig through your website looking for the information they are interested in, they will hit the back button and land on your competitor’s website. If people can’t easily find the content they are looking for, you have lost them before you even had a chance.
Focus on layout. Segment your audience by asking them who they are, and what they are looking for. Web navigation should be seamless and flow from one page of content to another. Ensure you are driving traffic with proper Call to Actions, and organizing your pages in a way that makes sense.
Here is a screenshot from one of our client’s new sites, this is a great example of audience segmentation.
Almost immediately users are asked to identify what they are looking for on the website. Each option is sending the user to a piece of cornerstone content with more information about the service they are interested in. Sending users to pages they are interested in that highlight your flagship services is a very important user experience element every successful business website must accomplish.
5. Promote a Lead Generation Offer
The only way for your website to generate ROI is for it to capture leads. Your chances of collecting lead information is exponentially higher with an exciting lead gen offer. This should be featured in a high visibility area of your website, in a place visitors are likely to see it.
Here is a great example of a lead gen offer from our website bryantdigital.com. Users are able to opt-in for a FREE SEO audit by providing their Email address.
Great examples of lead generating offer include:
- Free Proposal
- Online Course
- 30 Min Consultation
- eBooK Download
- Webinar
The easy addition of a lead generating offer to your website can greatly increase the amount of people that covert from simple web traffic to hot leads.
6. Use CTA’s To Drive User Engagement
Clickable call to action buttons are impossible to replace. This can be as simple as asking users a question and giving them a button that tells them what to do next. Below you can see a great example taken from PayPal.
CTA’s on your website should be big and obvious enough that users cannot miss them. Big blog buttons that drive movement will greatly increase your sites potential sales.
Conclusion
It’s easy to get lost and forget all the important goals your business website must accomplish to be successful.
Before building your website, it is important to plan to ensure your design elements, copy, and organization all work together to accomplish the same goals. All 6 of these goals working seamlessly together is the only way to maximize lead generation and ROI.
