According to Internet Stats & Facts for 2016 the internet contributes to over $2.2 trillion in annual retail sales. Are you getting any of these sales?
This astounding figure tells us are millions of companies generating leads online. This means for you to successfully do business in this arena you must play by the digital rules. The first one is to put up a great website – one that works to pull in more customers into your sales funnel.
Take this checklist of 20 crucial elements for a website with you when you meet with your web developer:
- Effective marketing tool – Your website must clearly highlight what your business does and how it can add value to your customer’s life.
- Lead generator – Does your website engage with visitors and are there sufficient calls-to-action to drive people to contact you?
- Integrate with your marketing strategy – Read our advice about matching your marketing strategy to your sales funnel and use it as a reference to help you integrate your website into your online marketing.
- A full-on customer experience – Your website should not be designed by your ego – what appeals to you – it must be designed for your customers and what appeals to them.
- Easy to navigate – If a visitor to your website cannot find the information they want quickly and easily, you will lose them to a competitor’s website.
- Attention grabbing – Your website is up against many others so make it different, make it engaging and give it the hooks to keep visitors there.
- Informative and persuasive (not sales-y) – Don’t turn your website into that pushy salesperson we all can’t stand. Customers come to websites looking for information and / or products; provide it for them in a thought-provoking way that will make them think about contacting you.
- Provide authority and credibility – Your website content should portray your business as the ultimate voice of wisdom and expertise in the industry.
- Look good – Great design that makes user want to hang out there and see it all; also helps further your mission to rank on Google. Follow the Google webmaster guidelines.
- Communicate your brand effectively – Get a professional content writer to write your copy to give it credibility and impact.
- Be conversational – Don’t communicate in industry speak. Remember that your customers are just people at the end of the day and the best way to engage with people is to be clear and simple. You’ll lose their interest pretty quickly if your content is all industry lingo and zero real conversation.
- Easy to find – Ah, the million dollar question: Do you rank on Google? Do things properly with your website and you will actually get Google to take notice.
- Device friendly – Make sure your website can be easily read on any device from PC and laptop to mobile phone and tablet.
- Easy to manage yourself – Are you able to load your own content such as blog articles and new products, etc?
- Easy to revamp – One thing is guaranteed and that is you will have to update your website every now and again. Make sure this is a simple thing to do regardless of which developer-works on it.
- Secure payment system – If you have an e-commerce website, do make sure your payment system is a secure one. Customers won’t buy from you otherwise.
- Clever contact request form – Set it up so that it is able to collect strategic data for you.
- Slick automation – Make sure your website can automatically respond to contact requests and check that it works properly.
- Google analytics set up – This will provide you with valuable insights into how well your website is doing which in turn helps you improve on it.
- Upload quickly – Keep your website simple. The less it has to upload the better.
Have you taken a look at your website through your customer’s’ eyes? If it needs a revamp, contact us at 10 Plus Media. We can audit your website and let you know how we can help you turn it into a GREAT, lead-generating website.
