Owning a small business can be exciting, but also a source of frustration, especially when it’s not going anywhere.
You did everything you were supposed to:
You have a great product, you got the website and then you waited for the calls to roll in.
But, after a few weeks, maybe months, why is no one was really calling, or making orders.
What went wrong?
What could possibly be wrong, the website looks great! But is it creating conversions.
In other words: is it drawing in people, turning them from visitors to customers? Are people staying on the site long enough? How do you know if people are even getting to the site?
You might have committed one of these common website mistakes.
Too much Going On
When creating a website for your business it can be easy to want to cram everything and anything you can about your business on the first page.
You basically are yelling look at me!
It’s sort of like those parents who just can’t wait to show you every. Single. Picture of little Tommy as he grows up (you know who you are….because sometimes I’m like that). However, doing so confuses your visitors.
You may have too many images, or maybe too many ads crammed into a small space and you don’t utilize whitespace.
What is whitespace? Well, it’s space between sections of your site.
Have space between your posts, add a picture here or there but don’t go overboard. When there are too many different things going on your visitors won’t know what they are supposed to do with all this info.
3 Things Your Website Should Answer
Make sure your site is clean and simple, but not too simple where they have too guess what it is you are selling. What can you do? Your landing page is crammed pack full of goodies, but your visitor doesn’t know what to do with it. Your landing page should answer 3 common questions:
- Who are you? (Not in metaphysical way or anything like that (unless that’s literally your business), just what is your business about?)
- What is it that you do? (In other words what sort of services or products do you offer?)
- Why should the visitor care? (So why is that the visitor should care about what you offer? What is the benefit for them? How do you stand out/are different from the crowded marketplace?)
You can make sure your tagline and home page are clear and simple. This helps your website better achieve what it sets out to do, which is help inform your visitor about why they should move from visitor to customer.
Need some more help on how to pick a tagline? Check out Gill Andrews’ great piece on how to best pick a tagline.
The next post will tackle a big problem that can help or hurt your website in regards to that initial ‘handshake’.
