We’ve all been there.
A shiny new website or a redesigned, refreshed website with great images and a new business logo and your website isn’t bringing in leads.
You’ve spent money on the design and layout, and you’re proud of it. After all, you believe it reflects the actual values of your business and business ethics.
Now you sit back and wait as the leads flood in, right?
Wrong.
What do most small businesses want?
Many businesses desire a steady stream of leads and companies that are interested in your products and services.
Why do some websites succeed, and others flounder?
In my opinion, a website is never complete; it is always a work in progress and the year’s I’ve been in business, social media and marketing has evolved and continues to do so.
All of which has an effect on your website.
Google updates have a significant impact on the responsiveness of your website.
You craft content including the right keywords that promote your business in your industry or niche.
You work hard to gain productive backlinks to increase website position and just when you think you’re on top, Google announces a major update – Core Web Vitals which is due to be rolled out in May 2021.
This forms part of the new page experience signals which, take into account a website’s loading speed, its responsiveness and visual stability, according to Neil Patel.
The emphasis is to provide a quality on-page experience for your visitors.
If your website is regularly updated and the content is top-notch, your visitors will come back because they’ve found something they need on your website.
Not only that, you’ve made it easy for them to find it, so why would they not get in contact with you?
Back to my question, why is your website not bringing in leads?
Are you solving your customers’ issues?
Is your website addressing the issues of your wannabe customers does it solve their problems, does it answer the questions that your prospective audience asks?
Too many websites write how great their business is rather than solving their customers’ problems.
How good are your products and services?
Focus on what you can do for your audience? Ask yourself why would anyone bother scrolling through my website, what is it I want to tell them?
What can we do for you? I love the analogy of the hammer and the hole in the wall.
The customer doesn’t want the hammer he wants a hole in the wall to hang his lovely painting.
If we highlight the hole in the wall and the joy he will get seeing his painting, this helps change how we present the value of what we are selling.
Is the spotlight on your customer, not on your business?
Why do your customers care if they find you on the internet?
Too many websites are about their own business and not enough about the customer.
Cite case studies or quotes from happy customers in the niche or industry you service.
If you can’t name drop, write a short story about how you helped a company with the same issue, it makes compelling reading to a prospective customer.
Write with the customer in mind and think about how you can ease their pain?
How can you make life easier, better and richer for them?
Develop the uniqueness of your brand
Your brand is an extension of your persona, the way you act, think and feel.
Think of the tone used across your content and website, they are an extension of your business values.
Building your brand includes the way you interact both on and offline. It’s about building a reputation around your company, products and you.
The truth is people are more likely to buy from you if the quality of your products/services matches your brand reputation.
The expression, ‘Her reputation precedes’ her is a form of brand identity it’s saying yes I know about her or I know she does XYZ.
That’s why helping people get to know and trust you by optimising your About You page and promoting content via social media helps build your brand identity and builds familiarity.
You might be surprised to learn that people like familiarity, that’s why regular social media posts and content produced consistently gains momentum and builds trust.
Your visitors don’t come back.
Furthermore, unless you offer them something of value, why should visitors come back?
Similarly, writing a blog every two months or posting updates about your company won’t increase engagement or convert leads into customers.
Most important, gain your visitors’ trust by educating the visitor on why they need you.
If the wrong people arrive at your website, no amount of hard work and astounding marketing skills will change that.
Let me explain.
If you sell homemade jewellery and your traffic is mostly plumbers no matter how hard you try you’ll never convert these visitors into customers.
Simply put plumbers aren’t after your products unless they’re buying a gift.
Is your website designed for the user?
To illustrate you what I mean, how many websites have you visited where you’ve seen a headline or something that’s interested you only to find that the website is unstable, it loads slowly, and the title or link bares no resemblance to the headline/title of the page that attracted you.
Annoying isn’t it.
User experience or UX; is how the user experiences a product, service or website.
If there are too many pop-ups or the information is misleading and the site navigation is hard work are examples of bad UX.
Your users’ experience on your website should be intuitive and easy to follow.
For this reason, I am undertaking a major project to rewrite, tweak and improve my websites.
This includes removing image URLs, checking for error 404 pages improving the SEO on my cornerstone content and working through old blog posts with low or obsolete content plus out of date URLs.
There’s a lot to do but a little bit here and there makes a huge difference on SEO.
So if you want to enjoy better website traffic and conversions be sure to update your website regularly.
And that’s not all Part 2 is next week.
See you then.
Isn’t it time you reviewed your website copy?
I provide expert advice and help that will guarantee increased engagement and more leads. Get in touch and let’s talk
One Woman’s View – helping you achieve more with less.
Further reading for you
https://onewomansview.co.uk/how-to-improve-your-website-content-writing/
