5 Basic Website Tips

by Marketing 101 October 12, 2020

basic website tips - marketing 101 - marketing consultant

Small business owners have it hard! They have to be experts in their own field, fine-tune their offering while managing customer communications, meanwhile building their own online presence. They’re working their website or social media while trying to run digital marketing campaigns! Running your own business requires such a wide range of skills when you bring ‘online’ into the equation. With this in mind I’ve created 5 basic website tips to help you fine-tune your site.

Over the last 6 weeks, I’ve given free online ‘health checks’ to dozens of businesses. This has entailed looking over websites and social media profiles to ensure the foundations of their online presence are solid, professional and set-up according to best-practice. Small business owners and sole-traders don’t always have time to fully educate themselves on digital best-practice. To help, I thought I highlight some of the things that cropped up repeatedly. Below, you can double-check if your website is giving you the best chance of converting a customer.

SIDE NOTE – We cover these tips in more detail in an episode of the Marketing 101 podcast. You can find the podcast on all podcast apps/platforms, or you can click below to listen to this specific episode.

3 tips that you should be able to do yourself;

1 – pricing

Potential customers are put off by hidden prices. Get some figures on your page so they can immediately asses if they have the budget. You don’t need to be specific, but giving some starting points or price bands will help a consumer feel confident enough to get in contact. Hidden pricing scares people off.

2 – testimonials

Everyone is wary of blaggers because it’s so easy to make a website and exaggerate about what they can offer. Make sure you get some quotes from happy customers on your home page to prove to people that you’re experienced and successful. This will really help put a new customer at ease.

3 – be clear on what you are selling

Nice branding and punchy visuals are great, but you need to spell out your services quickly and clearly. Make sure you highlight/introduce exactly what you’re selling on your home page. Link these through to pages with more detail about each of those services. Don’t assume that the name of your business or the photos you’ve chosen will tell people what you do – you need to be very literal with your purpose.

2 bits that you might need your website developer to do (unless you built it yourself)

4 – mobile compatibility

In 2019 43% of internet usage was via desktop computers, 7% on tablets, and 50% on mobile phones (more details here). You have to build your website on a desktop computer but think ‘mobile’ when you’re considering the design. The majority of browsing will be done on a mobile phone so make sure you prioritise your website design accordingly.

5 – visible, clickable contact details

Put your phone number and email address on your home page. They should be either in the header or the footer, or both. Make sure they’re ‘clickable’ both on mobile and desktop. Your ‘contact me’ page is vital but doesn’t replace the requirement to allow people to contact you in one click/tap from your homepage.

Hopefully, you’ve found these 5 basic website tips useful – if you’re not doing any of them then go and fix them asap. Let me know how you get on (or if there’s anything I can help with!) by popping to the contact page here. You can also tweet me a @alexryanuk.

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