As Americans are increasingly searching online for the products and services we need, a quality website is becoming more and more essential to effective marketing. When a potential customer visits your website, you want to make the best possible impression. If you have a website that conveys a sense of authority in your field, professionalism, trustworthiness, and approachability, then you begin to develop a positive relationship with your potential customers from the moment they land on your home page. You can demonstrate the value that your company delivers, provide easy access to information about your business, products, and services, and facilitate communication with leads. If, on the other hand, your website is sloppy, inconsistent, hard to navigate, or unpleasant to view, that user experience is the first impression your business will make on many potential customers. It is likely to also be the last.
Both design and content are essential to making a good impression on visitors to your site. It is important that the design be pleasing and easy to navigate. Visitors should be able to quickly and easily access whatever page of your site they need. A frustrating website experience is enough to send some visitors back to Google to find a company whose site is easier to use.
A good design will help keep visitors on your site long enough to acquaint themselves with your content. Outstanding content will help you begin to develop a sense of trust and value in your potential customers. Provide them relevant, valuable, and engaging content, and they will be more likely to remain longer on your site and learn about the value your business can deliver.
At the very least, your website should provide all the information potential customers will want about your business. It should highlight your products or services, give visitors reasons to obtain them from your company over others, and provide a contact form that allows leads to ask additional questions, get price quotes, or request services. If visitors can go to your website, quickly learn all they need to know about your company, and easily make contact with a representative, it will instill a sense of comfort and trust in your business. Visitors will be much more likely to become leads than if their experience leaves them wondering whether your company can serve their specific needs or if they have to remember to call during business hours to get their questions answered.
Beyond conveying basic information, your content should represent your company’s personality, or brand. Your brand tells a story about who you are as a company and the value you deliver to customers. Just as an individual’s personality is vital to first impressions, so is the personality of your business. You want your company to seem likeable, trustworthy, and authoritative. Just as you would pay attention to your appearance, speech, and attitude when meeting in person with potential customers, your website content should have an appearance, voice, and attitude than instills confidence and trust in visitors.
Your website presents a tremendous opportunity to demonstrate authority in your field, develop trust, and communicate directly with potential customers. A blog is a great way to capitalize on this opportunity. Blogging generates an average of 55% more traffic to a website, and 2/3 of marketers say that their company blog is vital to their business. An ideal blog will anticipate the questions that potential customers will be asking and provide clear, valuable, and well-written information to answer those questions. Providing quality answers to the specific questions users are asking is a great way to both boost search engine rankings and establish your company as an industry leader.
A savvy online marketing professional can help you craft a website that makes a great first impression on your visitors. A good marketer will listen to the story that you want to tell about your business, provide a website that tells that story clearly and elegantly, and optimize the site to extend your reach to greater numbers of users.
Blue Frog Marketing can help you create a website that projects the image you want for your company. We can provide everything from design through professional content writing and content marketing services to help you attract more visitors, engage them, earn their trust, and convert them into customers.