How to build a website? I have witnessed tens of such occurrences. A business owner will invest thousands of dollars in a beautiful website and open it with excitement, only to find months later that their analytics dashboard is rolling tumbleweeds. The site looks great. It just doesn’t convert.
Having assisted companies in creating their online presence for over ten years, I have come to realize that there is a significant gap between a professionally designed site and one that can attract paying customers. I will show you what the difference between the two is.
Begin With Your Customer, Not Your Design Preferences.
This is the first mistake most people commit: they create websites that they like rather than websites that their customers require.
A couple of years back, I was contracted by a plumber in Austin who desired a dark and edgy site with numerous video backgrounds. Cool aesthetic, sure. However, his customers were house owners facing the issue of burst pipes at 2 AM. They must have had phone numbers, service areas, and pricing information—fast. The quality of video production was of no importance to them.
Before a single line of the design is touched, how about the following questions: Who the heck is visiting this site? What is the issue that they are attempting to resolve? What do they know that they require to make a purchase decision?
All other things are derived from such answers.
Speed Saves (or Kills) Your Conversions.
I can keep emphasizing this point: when your site requires over three seconds to load, you are losing potential customers. It has always been revealed that conversion rates decrease on average by 4.42 percent with an increase in load time by an extra second.
Check your site speed by use of Google PageSpeed Insights. Compress your images. Choose reliable hosting. These are not glamour improvements, but they have a direct effect on your bottom line.
A client in the e-commerce industry that I have dealt with had a boost in sales of 23% when they moved to faster hosting and optimized their product pictures. No design changes. No new copy. Just speed.
Mobile is no longer an option.
Mobile devices contribute to more than half of the total web traffic. When your site is not really looking impressive on a phone display, you are practically telling half of your potential clientele to go away.
This implies user-friendly buttons, readable text without a zooming finger, and forms that can be filled in without using a magnifying glass. Take your phone now and attempt to use only your thumb to navigate your website. Frustrating? Fix it.
Your value proposition must strike ASAP.
In less than five seconds, when a person visits your home page, he or she is supposed to know what you sell, who you sell it to, and why they should be concerned. That’s not an exaggeration.
The headline is not where you can be clever or use corporate mummeries. Nothing whatever is mentioned in “Empowering Solutions to the Challenges of Tomorrow,” and everything I need to know is mentioned in 24-Hour Emergency Plumbing in Austin—We Fix It Tonight.
Be specific. Be clear. Be blunt about the advantage that you offer.
Establish rapport before soliciting the sale.
No one gives money to a stranger without being sure of him. Asking these visitors to act must be preceded by a systematic establishment of credibility on your website.
Inclusively provide actual testimonials of actual customers- names and photos where available. Put logos of companies that you have worked with on display. Demonstrate credentials, prizes, or newspaper coverage. Include a physical address and phone number to make people aware that you are an actual operation.
One of the landscaping firms I used provided me with retrospective and post photos of their work as well as client reviews. Their submissions through quote request forms went up by 67 percent in two months.
Establish Borderless Conversion Roads.
Each page within your website should lead visitors to take a particular action. Want them to call you? Ensure that your phone number is visible and clickable on all pages. Want them to fill out a form? Should be short and high profile.
Messages get mixed up, and conversions die. When visitors are forced to search for how to get in touch with you or initiate the purchasing process, a good number will walk away.
I suggest restricting the number of calls to action to one per page. Do not make people have six choices and expect them to make. Make the next step obvious.
Relevant Content.
The real customers must find a site that will attract real customers. It involves providing the content that responds to the questions that your potential buyers are actually searching.
One of my divorce clients, an attorney, began to post articles regarding the more frequently asked questions about custody, property sharing, and the divorce procedure in their state. In eight months, Google organic traffic became their main source of new clients initiating consultations.
It is not about games… search engines. It is about the real contribution to people, assisting them and showing your skills.
Measure What Matters
You will not be able to make better what you have not measured. Install Google Analytics and actually visit it frequently. On what pages are people leaving? What are your sources of form submissions? What’s your conversion rate?
Minor modifications made on the basis of actual data usually do better than total redesigns made on the basis of guesses.
The Bottom Line: How to build a website
A customer-generating site has nothing to do with flash and keeping up with the newest trends. It is about knowing your audience and their pain, eliminating their friction, developing trust within a short time, and making it so easy that they can do it.
It is not always the business that has the largest budget to win online. It is they who are obsessed with making their website truly useful to the people visiting it.
