How to Improve Your Website In 3 Easy Steps

My father-in-law's construction company didn't represent itself well at all.

They do great work, and they've been a pillar of the community since 1981, but their website needed major work. My wife and I worked on improving the site, and we leaned on three principles to do so.

1. Make the site visually appealing.

The picture above is how the site used to look. Frankly, this doesn't look modern or appealing. My father-in-law is a great businessman and a visionary, but he's not great at making websites. Fortunately, he has a talented daughter and son-in-law. Now the site looks like this:

Much better. It's clean. It's simple. It's easy to navigate. It's nice to look at. Designing a visually appealing website isn't rocket science, but make sure that your designs have a purpose and don't distract from your message.

2. What makes you different?

Something to remember about you site is that it isn't enough to tell you clients what you provide. You have to explain what makes your service unique and why it's better than your competition. This is how Integrity's janitorial section used to look:

It has all of the services they provide, but what makes them different from the company two miles away? Who knows? Here is the improved janitorial page:

Now? We know why a potential client should choose Integrity over a competitor. Does the company next door provide janitorial services? Probably. Do they have a comprehensive training program and vigorous quality control? Probably not! Make sure that your differentiators are present and obvious. If you don't have one? Reset and find one. Quickly.

3. Make it about the costumer.

The most glaring error of the old Integrity site was not considering why the costumer would benefit from their services. Again, they are a world class company that provides top notch services, but how would a potential client know from seeing this:

Our most important change here was with the copy. The old copy goes on and on about why their services are so great, but they never get to why their clients should care. The new copy solves that issue:

Not only does the new copy give a clearer list of benefits, but it also explains how the customer would benefit from choosing Integrity. "Having all these resources at our disposal saves your most valuable resources: time, money, and energy." A clear, concise pitch to customers that is universally appreciated. The new copy not only covers the "what," of their services, but the "why," which is almost always more important.

Keeping these three principles in mind are fairly simple, but they are very often missed due to companies focusing too much about themselves and having their priorities out of order. It is about the customer, and everything about your site and copy should be focused on making life easier for them. So keep your site visually appealing and modern. Explain what makes you different. Make sure the customer knows you have them in mind.

These three guidelines will ensure that you make appealing copy that will have clients ringing your phone off the hook and not thinking about your competitors.