Most people invest their time and money in a quality website design, because they want to make money themselves. Whether you are a tradesperson, retail shop owner, wholesaler, SEO professional, web designer or a blogger – your website is your online presence, so if it’s not giving customers what they want, you are doing both them and yourself a disservice.
At GO Creative, one of our main tasks is to create quality websites for small business owners, but often they already have a website, but it just isn’t working for them. When we take a look at their existing website however, we can usually see immediately why it isn’t working, and in truth, there are many factors that fit into this category.
There are three features however, that always seem to be missing from small business websites or at least they aren’t easily apparent to customers. These are your contact details, what you actually offer your visitors, and the information that visitors need. Let’s take a look at each of them in turn, even though they seem obvious!
Omitting your contact details in your website design
Your contact details are one of the most important pieces of information needed by visitors to your website. Most business owners include a ‘Contact Us’ page on their website, where they store this type of information, but often even this link is difficult to identify on some websites.
Visitors to your website shouldn’t have to search your website for your contact details, which is why it’s best practice to add it to every page on your website in the top right hand corner, so it’s easy to find. In fact, if you want people to visit your store, cafe or restaurant, you should make sure that your new website design includes a text box in the sidebar of every page to display your phone number and physical address, so it’s easily seen. It’s a simple idea, but works every time!
What do you offer people on your website?
Who are you and what do you do? These are the main questions that should be instantly answered whenever someone lands on your website. There’s no point in prattling on about your history and what you believe is the right thing to do in certain circumstances, when all someone wanted was to find a plumber!
So if you are a plumber, make sure that your website design makes it immediately obvious to everyone who visits your website, the second they land on any of your pages. Forget lines and lines of unedited text and those obtrusive pop-up boxes that want you to subscribe before you even know what they are offering – just include a clear description of what can do for your visitors without distracting them from your message.
Not giving customers the information they need
When visitors find it difficult to navigate through your website, they will leave very quickly. Why bother searching fruitlessly for information, when another website makes it easy to find what they want? If you have a large collection of products, always fit these into suitable categories and even include a filtering feature to make finding your products even easier. On the other hand, if you offer a range of services, always include a ‘Services’ category in your main menu bar.
It doesn’t take much effort to ensure that your website design is user friendly, but it makes a big difference to your visitors.
