Most people can set up a small business website, but how do you ensure it generates sales?
A successful small business website has great content, is regularly updated, innovative, easy to use, and, ideally, has a good visitor-customer conversion rate. However, many businesses struggle to build and maintain a successful website, because they just don't know how to or they do it themselves.
The following tips can help you make a sales-driven website work harder to win new customers while maintaining your current client base.
Your website should sell to your customer
Most profitable business websites are not run by a large corporate company, but by an unassuming guy or girl who answeres every conceivable question that the target customers have about their business on their website's FAQ page.
It's a great strategy and one that every business should deploy for their website. Web visitors are primarily hunters. They hunt for information, and if you don't give them what they need, they'll go elsewhere.
By putting yourself in your potential customer's shoes and answering every question they could have about your product or service, you put them at ease, build up trust in your brand, and set up yourself as the expert in your field. That will help you win customers, and, is more effective than just sales page tactics deployed on some business websites. Nobody likes the hard sell, so why scare away your potential customers by using such tactics?
Optimize your website for search engines
The greatest small business website in the world is no good to anyone if it can't be found. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website so that it comes up in search engine results for certain keywords. The better optimized your website is, the higher up your search engine ranking will be.
Here are some easy – and free – steps you can take to optimize your website so that it shows up in search engine rankings for your target customers.
1. Research the keywords you want to rank highly in search engines for. Google Adwords' Keyword Tool is a great way of doing this.
2. Use those keywords in your content, but exercise restraint. You don't want to stuff your content with the same keyword 200 times on a 350-word web page, because it makes for a bad reading experience for your target customers. It could also get you penalized by Google – and you don't want that.
3. Links are considered currency on the web. So try getting links to your website in good content on high-ranking websites. Links to your site are known as backlinks and are at their most valuable when you include the keywords in a natural way. This is because it tells search engines that your website is trusted, which makes them more likely to push you up the search rankings, meaning your site will appear higher in a keyword search. If you need any, DEGOM Marketing can provide great backlinks for your small business website.
Update and keep your website fresh
Search engines love fresh content, and so do website visitors. The easiest way to keep your content fresh is by having a blog on your website. It's a great way of communicating with your customers, building up an audience, increasing traffic to your website, and generally making yourself a thought leader in your industry. It's also great for your SEO.
If you haven't got the time nor inclination to do this, then outsource your SEO tasks.
Navigation and usability matter – keep it simple
Bad navigation and information architecture (the way you structure your content) can cost you lost sales. So keep it simple, modern, and intuitive – this always works.
Online is great, but website visitors like humans too
Ultimately, your customers are human, not virtual, so make sure your contact details are clearly visible on every page of your website. Using anchors to navigate website visitors back to a contact form and using catchy CTA ( Call to Action) buttons will work wonders to Create a Sales-Driven Small Business Website.