Updating Your Website with Clients in Mind By Megan Murphy
The internet is both fun and exciting place, but for some business owners, it can be an overwhelming place where you might feel lost in a sea of other online businesses and brands. But where would we be without the internet? Despite how some might feel about its negatives, the positives are still wonderful things that we sometimes take for granted. For example, forty years ago, when the internet was in its infancy, it wasn’t possible for anyone – truly anyone – to open an online brand or business. There was a time when information and education weren’t as readily available as it is now. The internet opened up endless possibilities to learn, build and work. In fact, EVA itself couldn’t have existed 40 years ago. and for that fact alone, we should be thankful for the internet and all the opportunities it has created.
The key to loving it and building your brand, among other things, is the proper use of SEOs, understanding online traffic, and above all else, having a well-designed and functional website!
Do you remember the early days of websites with flashing graphics, chunks of text you had to dig through to get where you were going, and no basis for sources? Thankfully those days are behind us. If you’re lost in terms of design there are a few rules you should always follow. First, when designing your website, you should make sure there is a good balance between images, text, and videos. Too much of one or the other is going to reduce your traffic or overwhelm your audience. If someone’s interested in what you have to say make sure it’s accompanied by other eye-catching graphics or videos in case your potential client isn’t keen on reading about it. On the same note, make sure your website isn’t loaded with so much text or photos that it looks cluttered. There should be ample white space and have a clean face to it. This means white space on your page has just as big of an impact as the images, logos, and text that’s on the page. There are some thoughts on color theory for websites too. Warm colors tend to evoke a more emotional response from customers; thus, you can more easily create a bond with them when your website features colors like oranges, reds and carefully chosen shades of yellow. But yellow can also be irritating to the eye so make sure to use it sparingly. Blues and Greens tend to be seen as professional and bring the idea of wealth. There’s also thought to be put into font choices and how they accentuate your information and brand, not to mention your diction and phrasing matter as well.
Once you’re done painting the picture for your prospective, ideal clients with design, then it’s time to think about your SEO needs. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and essentially that means making yourself visible online and in search engines – like Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. Search engines bring traffic to your website and business. Only 94% of Googles users look past the first page of results, so if your website isn’t on that first page, you may not be seen at all. There are over 1.86 billion websites listed on the internet and the way to make yours stand out is with keywords and backlinks. Keywords tell Google what your website is about and backlinks show a “vote of confidence” from one website to another. A good SEO understanding and plan can advertise your website for you whenever a potential customer is looking for a service or product like yours.
Once you’ve gotten them to visit your page, then your next goal is to get them to become a customer and stay loyal. That’s where “funnels” come into play. Funnels are a marketing plan to capture new customers and turn them into loyal customers. You start with what is called a “lead magnet” which is often a free item or service that is given away with the purpose of gathering contact details. When customers engage with these attention-grabbing pieces, they learn more about your business and once you have them interested and you build the “know, like and trust” factor with them, they become customers.
There are a few other things to consider when building your website and business, like site speed. If your site speed is slow you may lose a lot of potential leads or customers. Most people won’t wait longer than 6-7 seconds for a website to load information. A program like Google Site Speed will help tell you your Lighthouse Score which is a web auditing tool that uses emulated data collected in a controlled environment with a predefined device and network settings, which gives you your score out of 100. 100 is a perfect score. Here’s a link explaining this tool further. Google Analytics also has a diverse collection of free classes about building website enhancement like Google Tag Manager and other analytics tools to make your SEO optimization.
Before I go, I wanted to mention an invaluable resource that has helped many of Elite Virtual Assistant’s clients with their website design, and EVA with our content and funnel creation. Wise Owl Marketing, run by Heather Stephens, has everything you could ever need to build a comprehensive marketing plan to take your website to new heights. Heather is brilliant and has a very easy-to-follow process that helped us design and implement our new sales slides and marketing funnel. I highly recommend you check them out at the link above. Wise Owl is offering a free 30-minute consultation to help you build the funnel & website of your dreams.
