More and more people begin the buying process online. Virtually every business has a website these days, but many websites are underperforming or not performing at all.
SCORE consults with hundreds of local business owners each year, and this is the advice we give them concerning their websites.
A good website must include some key features to be successful:
- First, it must indexed and delivered on the first page of the various search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. This exposes potential clients to your site when they search for relevant key phrases. It is imperative your website is easy to find when clients are searching for your products and services.
- Secondly, the website must deliver the product, service or information the client is looking for right away. If a visitor to your website does not see what they want quickly, your chances of conversion are significantly reduced. Be sure your website is optimized to display information on mobile devices too.
- Every good website has a great call to action to convert visitors into clients. In addition to the call to action, which is designed to convert the small percentage of clients who are ready to buy now, your website needs to have an offer to capture contact data for visitors who are not ready to buy yet but who will buy in the future.
- Finally, every good website needs a system to track the results. Google Analytics is a popular free tracking program. Your tracking system should tell you how many visitors you had, how many became actual clients, which pages they visited and which offers worked the best.
If you need professional help, go to your favorite search engine and type in the service you offer. Make note of your competitors who are the first page of results.
Look at their website and see who built it. That might be a great place for you to start.
