Many businesses have a website because it is ‘the done thing’ but they have no plans for how they are going to use it. And, even those that do, don’t utilise it as they should. Businesses that continue to leave their websites as little more than extravagant online business cards will fall further behind this year, as more and more competitors focus on the flow of a customer from introduction to sale, and people become more used to being guided through a process.

What do to about it

I can explain this in five steps:

Firstly, you probably don’t want your website to be there just to look fancy so you can show it off to your friends, nor do you want it to be a corporate site aimed at impressing investors. If you’re reading this, you probably own a small business and both of these things would be a waste of time. You want your website to take people who are thinking about buying from you, to getting them to buy from you. 

Open up your webpage and look at it with a fresh set of eyes, pretending to be your most ideal customer. Think about the journey they need to take from landing on this page to being a customer of yours. Their next step, their next click, the info they need – is it all there and clear? It should be. It doesn’t even matter if this makes your website overly simple. It’s not there to impress, it’s there to sell.

Secondly, give something, get something. If you’re lucky enough to have someone land on your website, don’t waste their visit. give them something straight away – a report, industry info, do’s and don’ts of buying your product, an audit or assessment – whatever. But don’t waste the visit.

It’s important that your website sells as frictionlessly as possible, but if someone isn’t immediately ready to click your ‘order now’ button or turn up at your shop, give them something to make their visit feel purposeful and in return get their contact details so that you can keep in touch with them. Or make sure you give them something which will bring them back to your site in the future, and keep you top of their mind.

Thirdly, Include content that shows the value you are offering. And what I mean by value here isn’t ‘cheapness’ – I mean, how great will it be for them when they give you your money. You can show this by listing features, showing pictures, or describing functionality. And remember this: “When the value is clear, the decision is easy”

Fourthly, this links to the others but is essential enough to be a point in its own right. Have a call to action. Tell your visitor what they can, should, or could do whilst on this website. “Read more”, “download this info pack”, “book your visit”, “call Sam at reception on …” whatever it is, people need to be told what to do.

Tell them what to do. In fact, you can have multiple ‘call to actions’ on your homepage. You can have a ‘buy now’ kind of section for the people who are ready to give you their money. You can have a ‘read more’ section for people who you want to be a source of information for, and you can have a ‘give/get’ section to capture their details in return for an industry guide. 

Whatever your call to actions are, they must be there, they must be clear, and they must stop your visitors from hitting that back button too early.

Finally, people care what other people think about your business. So display testimonials, and display your reviews. If you can, people trust reviews from Google a lot, so have a widget that shows a live feed of your Google reviews.

BONUS THING. Show your pricing, unless you are ABSOLUTELY sure that you can’t, or you have thought long and hard about choosing not to.