4 Tips for Building a Website Your Customers Will Love

The following is adapted from Stop Random Acts of Marketing.

Imagine you want to hire a home contractor. You do a Google search for your area, and pull up the website of a contractor that has received good reviews. You are greeted by a wall of text. You scroll to the bottom, hoping to find a “Contact Us” link, but no luck. You look at the navigational menu, but nothing catches your eye, so you return to your search results.

You open up a second contractor’s website. This time, you are greeted by pictures of the contractor, his smiling workers and examples of their finished projects. Below that, you see several customer testimonials, raving about the quality and timeliness of the work. Right at the top of the page is a button for you to schedule an appointment. You click it, and within a matter of moments, you have an appointment scheduled.

Which of these style of websites would you rather have for your company? The choice is obvious: the second one.

A website is a powerful tool. Designed well, it can generate leads and drive sales, but designed poorly, it will drive customers to the competition.

To build a website that your customers will love and that will work for, not against, your business, you need to follow these four tips:

1. Create clear design and navigation.
2. Build strong content.
3. Use engaging visuals.
4. Connect everything together.

#1: Create Clear Design and Navigation

In order for users to care about what you have to say on your website, the design and navigation must not get in the way.

With any website, start with design. If your website needs to be updated, invest time and money to make sure visitors won’t click away simply because the site looks old or isn’t visually appealing. 

Keep in mind that excellent design will only go so far if the site is confusing to use. Navigation is just as important to user experience.

Navigation refers to how your website is laid out, and there’s real skill involved in perfecting it. For example, if you want different messages by industry, you should have industries as a top navigation item. However, if you market by product, you’ll want to use products as the top navigation items.

Clear navigation is important for optimized user experience and for Google crawlers, which are programs that automatically scan websites. A sitemap is also beneficial for Google indexing (the process by which web pages are added to Google search), and it helps your readers find their way around your site. You also need to be easy to contact, so make sure you have a clearly visible “Contact Us” option on your home page.

#2: Build Strong Content

Once you spend time on good design and clear navigation, you need to ensure that your content is strong. What do you want people to do on your website, and how can you support them as they research and shop? To answer these questions, you have to think from a customer standpoint. When they research your product category or service, what questions do they ask, and how do you answer those questions?

The content on your home page is key. When you land on a home page, you should be able to quickly identify what the company does, who they serve, their market position and why they are different. 

Throughout your website, you want to give your customers lots of opportunities to engage with you. Make sure you utilize impactful, well-placed “calls to action”. Calls to action should include enough information to persuade the user to take the next step. Examples include the following:

• Sign up for a free consultation or a newsletter.
• Download an ebook.
• Register for a podcast or a webinar.
• Watch a video.

#3: Use Engaging Visuals

Photographs are invaluable messaging tools and should underpin the concept of what you do and who you serve. People are visual learners, and they will be drawn to pictures before they are drawn to text.

Use visuals that are connected to your business. If you run a restaurant, for instance, use photos of your food and interior. If you sell cosmetics, include pictures of your best-selling products.

People like to know who they’re doing business with, so it’s a good idea to have pictures of your leadership team and other key employees somewhere on your site as well.

Visuals should include more than just photographs. Simple, clear graphs can be engaging and lend you credibility. Video content is especially eye-catching and can hook customers, causing them to spend more time on your website than they otherwise would.

In a crowded, noisy marketplace, you’ve got to find a way to cut through all the clutter and stand out. You can often do this through great visuals.

#4: Connect Everything Together

As you think through your website, you want to consider how it will connect to other marketing channels and efforts. You want to ensure that your message is consistent across all platforms. You also want to make sure platforms are linked in appropriate ways.

For example, if you’re doing an email campaign, one of the cardinal rules is to never send readers to your home page. Instead, you want to direct them to a landing page: a stand-alone web page created specifically for the purposes of the campaign. It’s where a visitor “lands” when they click on a Google ad or link in your email. Using landing pages allows for more targeted marketing, with a higher conversion rate.

A Better Website

Today, a huge proportion of customers’ shopping experience takes place online. If you have a subpar website, customers will simply click the “Back” button and find someone with a better, more user-friendly website.

To compete in the digital age, you need an engaging website. If you’re in the process of building a website, use the four tips of this article to guide your design. If you already have a website, take a look at it right now and then look at your competitors’ websites. What can you do to make your website more appealing and easier to navigate than your competitors’?

With some thoughtful planning, you can create a website like the second contractor from the example at the beginning of this article. Instead of driving your customers to the competition, your website can be one of your business’s most valuable and cost-effective drivers of marketing and sales. 

For more advice on creating a company website, you can find Stop Random Acts of Marketing on Amazon.

Karen Hayward relocated to the US after two decades at Xerox Canada. She has focused on mid-market and high-growth companies, right-sizing the sales and marketing strategies learned from a world class organization. For the past four years as CMO and managing partner with Chief Outsiders, she has focused her practice on mid-market companies needing to accelerate top line revenue growth. She has been a guest lecturer at various universities and has been a featured speaker at conferences and on webcasts.