How to Build a High Converting Website for Your Business
It Is No Longer Business As Usual
Today, about three out of four consumers looking for local businesses start their search online before making a decision.
That means if you still rely on traditional methods like door hangers, flyers, and print ads in local newspapers to promote your local business, you are losing a lot of potential customers to your competitors.
Even if everyone in your area is searching for the product or services you offer, how do you think they will find your business if you don’t have a website? Business is now conducted differently; most part of a consumer purchase decision now happen online.
However, having just any type of website is more like not having a website at all. Many local businesses have websites, but those sites are poorly optimized to generate leads.
In this guide, we will be explaining how you can create a website that will consistently bring quality leads to your business. so, you are likely going to be learning important elements you should include in your website, how to make your website mobile responsive and why, why call to actions are important, and many more.So let’s get right into business!
8 Steps to Building a Perfect Website for Your Business
#1: Understand What Exactly You Would Like Your Website to Do
This is the first thing to do when looking to build a website that converts. Start by understanding what you want to achieve with the website and set goals on how to achieve them. These may include:
- Creating awareness of your home service business
- Providing customer service
- Generating quality leads
- Answering common customer questions
Once you have a clear cut of why you are creating a website, then think about what actions your potential customers would need to take for you to achieve the goals you have set. For example, if your goal is to generate quality leads for your business, some actions you might want your customers to take are:
- Use online self-service tools to make an appointment for a consultation
- Call you on the phone
- Fill out an online contact form
These actions you are expecting from your customers are what will determine the kind of elements you will be including on your website. In the above example, you will need to have a phone number or click-to-call button on the site. You will also need an online contact form and an app that makes it easy for customers to schedule an appointment online.
#2: Identify important elements to Include On Your Website
The next thing now is to make a basic outline that shows how many pages you want to include in your website and what you want to have on each of the pages. You can either use a template for this based on trends in the industry or have it customized for your business. It can even be created from a paper sketch.
More relevant pages means better customer experience
Many local businesses, in the bid to reduce the number of pages on their website, go ahead and fill their homepage with all the information about their service. This is not a good practice because it can cause the site to load more slowly, chasing off customers and sending a bad signal to search engines.
Studies have revealed that if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, it can cause your users to hit the back button and head to your competitors’ site instead. At the same time, smaller websites tend to load faster.
So when you create more pages on your website, that will increase your site’s load time and also encourage your users to click to other pages on the site. This has a way of helping to improve your reputation with search engines while also increasing your overall web traffic.
What are some pages you should consider including on your website?
- About Us: Homeowners would like to know who they want to do business with. So, your “About Us” page should give enough information about your business. Also, include photos of your team if possible.
- Our Services: If you offer more than one service, it will be best to create a separate page for each service
- Contact Us: Include multiple contact methods here, such as email, phone, text, or contact form
- Photo Gallery: You can have separate photo gallery pages for different services you provide
- Testimonials/Reviews: Link to reviews and ratings of your business on popular sites like Yelp and Angie’s List.
Rmember to Include a Call-To-Action on Every Page
Call to actions (CTAs) are messages that clearly show what you want from your users – what you expect them to do. Whether you want them to call you or schedule a free consultation, your call to action will be the voice to relay the message to them. More than many people would imagine, call to action play aan important role in helping to convert visitors to paying customers.
However, don’t overdo this. Don’t be tempted to put too many CTAs on a page; just one per page is enough. At the same time, don’t make your visitors go through too many steps before they could take an action. If a page’s CTA says, “Get an Estimate”, visitors who click on that should be directed straight to the page they would be able to get estimates for their projects.
Not sure what to do? Use templates
Templates are created based on commonly accepted standards for what a website should include in your industry. How they should be laid out and what elements they should have. If you are not sure how to design your website, you can simplify the process by opting for a template.
Designing your site using a template will make the site easier to navigate for your audience and also makes it easy for them to find the information they need and take the necessary step. If you would still need some changes made to the template, such as having it reflect your business color theme or fonts, your designer can easily customize it to suit your taste.
#3: Optimize Your Website Load Speed
We already mentioned this but it is good we reemphasize it again. Having a site that loads quickly – under 3 seconds, is a very good thing for your business. To make this happen, here are a couple of things you should do:
Are your page elements loading in the right order?
Ensure the most important elements of your site are the ones that load first. For instance, you should have the top of the page loading first before the bottom of the page. At the same time, your CTAs should load before photo captions.
Optimize your images
Visuals play important role in any home services website. However having too many photos on a single page, or photos that are too large can cause your website to slow down. Speak to your website designer to know the best image size to use that will give you the best results without affecting your load speed.
Get an SSL Certificate
An SSL Certificate is what assures your visitors that they are secure on your site, and the information they supply is protected – whether it is their phone number or email. You can tell a site has an SSL Certificate if the URL is carrying “https” instead of “http” at the beginning.
Apart from providing security to your website users, SSL may also be required for some functions on your site, such as looking up locations or mapping. Not having an SSL Certificate can also cause your site to slow down. Speak to your web hosting provider and make sure they provide the necessary security settings for your site.
#4: Your Website Should Be Responsive In Mobile
Gone are the days when businesses need two versions of their website – the desktop version and the mobile version. Then, they would have to maintain and update the two sites separately.
But today, website designers can create “mobile responsive” websites. That means, irrespective of the device used to access your website, it will do just fine on it. A mobile responsive website will display correctly across different screen sizes – whether it be on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
When it comes to ranking high in search results, your website just needs to be mobile responsive. And since more than half of searches are done on smartphones, you should give priority to having your website do well on mobile.
Nevertheless, even with a mobile-responsive website, there are still some things you need to do to make your website perfect on mobile. Remove any excess details and hone in on your CTA. Make sure you have your CTA well spelled out so mobile users can contact you right away from their phones.
#5: Content is King
The content of your website simply refers to the words and images on the site. So let’s see some tips to getting the right content on your website.
Keep your content simple
It is important that your content is easy to comprehend by anyone that lands on your site, regardless of their level of comprehension. You need to convey your message in as few words as possible. Prospective customers are always busy, so they want to read and quickly read your content and grab what you can offer them.
If you think this is not what you can do, you can try working with a copywriter who has experience in online marketing to help you out. It will be worth it in the end anyway!
Optimize your content
Optimizing your website content includes adding relevant keywords in the content, meta description, page description, and title tags. If you are not sure how to get the best keywords for your site, you can try Google’s Keyword Planner. It is a free tool by Google that can help you with that. Some web design companies that provide SEO assistance can also be of great help too.
Regularly update your website
On regular basis, you should update your website. For example, when you have new photos of your work or have seasonal products in stock, you should let your customers know on your website.
On that note, make sure the content management system (CMS) your website designers use is simple enough so anyone on your team can handle the task of updating the website without having to call tech support.
#6: Test to Make Sure Your Website Is Working Fine
That your website is fully designed and running doesn’t mean your work is over. You still need to do a quick check to make sure it is working properly. Some of the things you might need to do include:
- Check all the links to be sure none of them is not working or leading to a dead end
- Proofread the content to correct any forms of spelling mistakes, typos or grammatical errors
- If possible, hire a professional proofreader to do this for you
- Let some members of your team test and play around on your website.
- Listen to their feedback on how functional and responsive the site is. Then make necessary changes based on their feedback
#7: Promote Your Website
Once you are sure everything is okay with your website, then you can promote your URL in all of your marketing materials. So don’t be afraid to add your website URL to your email signature, business cards, print advertising, and social media platforms.
At the same time, don’t forget to update your business listings on local search directories. Let your listing include a link to your website now that you have one.
#8: Regular Maintenance is Important too
Well, to ensure your website keep performing at its best, be sure to:
- On a regular basis, add fresh and quality content to your website to improve SEO
- Check your website once every month to be sure your links are working well and that your information is current and correct.
- Track your performance using relevant analytic tools. Some web host provide this, soyou’re your host if it’s also included in their offerings.
Final Note
Your website represents an important part of your business. Having a well-designed and well-optimized site can help convert your visitors to paying customers. But it’s not just about having any website; you have to do your best to make sure your website can achieve the goal for which you created it. That includes making it mobile responsive, optimizing its content, including important elements on it, and many more.
Give your business the extra boost it needs to have an edge over your competitors; create a website that represents you in the best way possible while also helping to drive conversion.