Creating A Website That Works Harder For Your Business
Tell Your Website To Stop Being Lazy!
Studies show it takes about 50 milliseconds for visitors to form an opinion about your website, including whether they will stay or leave. How can you make the most of that first impression? Solid website design paired with strategic placement of your most kickass brand statements and results will make sure your website is pulling in leads.
Business Website Design Tips
1. Grab Their Attention
2. Know Your Site’s Purpose
3. Use Trust Signals
4. Showcase Your Industry Leadership
5. Make It Easy
6. A/B Test
7. Be Bold
8. Be Human
9. Consider Some AI Assistance
10. Know Your Stats
How To Create A Website That Drives Revenue
Every business, from e-commerce to B2B services, can benefit from a stellar website focused on increasing company sales. Even when you don’t sell anything on your site, the content you include can have a big impact on whether or not visitors contact you for a consultation and, eventually, a sale. Your site is your company representative available 24/7, but you have to know how to take advantage of it.
Grab Their Attention
Start with a clean website design focused on an impressive visual. You don’t want your site’s look to feel stale just next season, so consider classic design principles with subtle trends on top.
Add an exciting headline focused on your unique sales proposition (USP) that will raise their eyebrows. A profound statement about key benefits and the impact your offering has had goes a long way to keeping your visitor on the page. Be specific; use numbers where possible. Your visitor wants to see what you can do for them, so show them.
Know Your Site’s Purpose
Don’t waste anyone’s time with fluffy statements and an unclear path. When you set out to design or redesign your website, have a clear goal for what you want your visitor to do while they’re there. This makes it easier to develop content, wireframes, and design elements around this purpose. Your calls to action (CTAs) and button copy can point them in the right direction, helping them feel like their journey has purpose.
Some common business website goals:
- Increase sales
- Generate more traffic and qualified leads
- Increase awareness (around new branding, new product or service launches, etc.)
Use Trust Signals
Trust signals are evidence for your website visitors to feel more secure in doing business with you. They can be subtly incorporated into your design layout, or be more extensive on their own page. Either way, when you are asking your visitor to hand over their information and possibly their money for your services, trust is going to be a key part of closing the deal.
Trust signals that work:
- Case studies
- Data
- Clients you’ve worked with (logos, lists, examples, etc.)
- Testimonials
- Awards or recognition
- Educational content marketing (blog posts, free tools, templates, etc.)
If you’re unsure about how to create content that will radiate trust in your business, mintr has content creation professionals who would love to help.
Showcase Your Industry Leadership
Possibly the biggest trust signal of all is your thought leadership within your industry. When you know your industry well enough to offer meaningful education to potential clients, that shows not only your knowledge but your dedication to improving the landscape.
When your website is solely focused on selling to your visitor, they can feel it. Don’t make your site into a pushy salesman; think of it as a place where your potential customers can come for education. When they want to know more about something in your industry, you want them coming to your site for answers. That builds trust, engagement, and loyalty, which will lead to sales.
Content marketing is an efficient way of offering valuable education tailored to your target audience. They can take the forms of blog posts, free tools or templates, videos, infographics, or newsletters. If you aren’t equipped to handle content marketing, mintr has lots of content creation options to set you up for success.
Make It Easy
Nothing makes a potential client exit a page faster than a slow-to-load website that is difficult to navigate. The probability that a visitor will abandon the page increases 32 percent as the page load time goes from one second to 3 seconds. Keep graphics and image dimensions and sizes manageable, and update plugins to keep the page running smoothly.
Additionally, think what do your potential leads want? What information has worked well in the past to convert them into customers? What have more successful businesses done that you can learn from?
Set this information front and center instead of hiding it on secondary pages. Offer them specific descriptions about who you are, what you do, your core values, and the impact you’ve had for your clients; give them a taste of the good stuff that will keep them wanting more.
A/B Test
What if you don’t know what your visitor wants? You need data. A/B testing to make data-driven decisions is powerful. Essentially, A/B testing is creating two or more versions of your website or landing page and comparing the conversion rates to decide on a better fit to get the intended goal.
Use A/B testing to make informed decisions about many pieces of your website, but it is crucial to be strategic.
- Make sure you know what goals you are looking for and have access to the data to determine a winner (traffic, clicks, conversions, etc.)
- The most common pieces of website design to test are copy length, headlines, CTAs, images, and colors.
- Have a hypothesis. Use what you know about your target audience, their feedback, and how they have interacted with your site in the past to create the changed version. If it outperforms the other version, you will know your hypothesis was correct.
Be Bold
You have them on your site, now isn’t the time to shrink away!
Say something provocative. Do something differently. Push the boundaries where you can while keeping true to your brand. Being bold doesn’t have to mean using aggressive language or being irreverent (though it could if your brand voice goes there!). Stand out, use interesting angles, and show your brand’s personality.
Not sure how to find the bold in your brand? Business branding services are one of mintr’s specialties.
Be Human
B2B buyers are always under an avalanche of online content, and much of it is irrelevant fluff written by bots and pushed out to the masses.
But you’re not a bot; your business is the result of sweat and tears and years of work. Let your target audience know the people behind the brand.
Just because your website isn’t a person doesn’t mean it can’t feel a little more human. Build empathy into your site messaging. Dig deep into your target customer’s biggest fear and help them find the answer. Set up easy access to your team through content they’ve created (videos, blog posts, podcasts). Authentic emotional connection through your website can set you apart.
Make it easy for visitors to contact you. Studies have shown that 44% of website visitors will leave a company’s website if there’s no contact information or phone number, so that small human element obviously means a lot.
Consider Some AI Assistance
Yes, there is a balance between showing your business’s human side and using AI assistance when you need it. The key is just that: balance.
When you decide to use a chatbot on your website, know what problems you want to solve. Chatbots are incredibly dynamic now, and they can be created to speak in your brand to answer whatever questions your visitors may have. Your chatbot could be the key to reducing your bounce rate by answering frequently asked questions or improving conversions by setting up contact—just don’t let the robots take over the operation. Keep the human touch.
Know Your Stats
How can you tell if your website is working hard or hardly working? There are lots of metrics that can give you a picture, but only if you actively track them. Otherwise, they are just a sea of numbers and missed opportunities to increase your revenue.
Top business website metrics to track:
- Unique visitors
- Conversion rates of your goals (filled out forms, signed up for your newsletter, etc.)
- Top pages visited
- Bounce rate
- Referral pages (search engines or websites visitors came from)
That’s a lot of numbers. How can you track them?
- Google Analytics
- Google Conversion Tracking
- SEO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Ubersuggest
- Ask mintr to track and analyze them for you
If you are looking for support to create some tasty marketing and drive growth, contact the mintr team for a free product marketing audit.
Ready to be bold?
Hit us up to find out how.