- Simple and Well-organised Website Design
Having your website designed can get a little overwhelming and you might be tempted to put as much in there as possible but this is when you need to practice a little restraint. Flash animation, background sound and large graphics may not be the best choice, particularly for a professional website. Focus on what’s truly important – a website that is organised so that visitors can easily find what they are looking for so great navigation and internal linking. The images need to be clear and correctly sized and the text easy to read (typically dark text on a light background works best.
- Work on your response time
When a visitor completes an online query, asks a questions via a social media platform or emails your business they are not just a website visitor, they are a potential customer and need to be treated as such. If a person walked into your bricks and mortar store would you leave them standing, waiting to be served? Of course you wouldn’t – you would ask how you could be of help and answer any questions in a timely manner – the same rules need to apply for those reaching out through online channels.
- Engage, engage, engage
By engaging with website visitors and social media followers you have the potential to turn them into active participants in your business and increase loyalty, reach and sales. How can you do this? Start up a blog and open it up for comments (beware of spammers though – talk to your website designer about to handle website comments), add a discussion board or forum, get onto social media if you haven’t already. The big platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn will allow you to converse, share and inform your customers about what your business is up to.
- Don’t oversell
Once you have a potential customer resist the temptation to do the oversell. A pushy salesperson in a physical store is likely to drive the visitor straight out the door and the same is true online. Offer information on the advantages, benefits and features of your products/services but don’t pressure and don’t use ‘spammy’ language.
- Welcome back…
Repeat website visitors = repeat custom. Brainstorm ideas of how to get visitors to return to your website on a regular basis and you will see an increase in sales. A couple of examples might be – a discount or sale on a once-a-month basis or a riveting/relevant blog series that will keep them returning to read the next instalment. Don’t forget to tell everyone about what you’re doing via an email (newsletter, EDM) and/or social media. Even just adding quality, engaging content on a regular basis can be a good way to get visitors returning to your site (and it’s great for SEO purposes too).
Come back next week to see the rest of the Website Design Centre team’s top tips for online success – did you see what we did there? Hope you see you back soon. If you have any questions about how we can assist you in achieving online you can contact us here
