Whereas the Holy Grail of digital marketing is The Website That Ranks The Best On Google, the Lost Scroll of digital marketing is The Website That Is Best At Conversions. Website companies are fixated on Google rankings (because there are impressive stats for this), but pay less attention to how many of the visitors actually turn profitable.
But we have been secretly been searching for this lost scroll the entire time, and we may have found it. Now, we will share with you our way of creating the ultimate small business website for converting customers to your business. But be prepared, because if they get converted too strongly, your business may turn into a religion.
1. Instant business details
The great majority of business websites make you trawl through several pages to get all the business details that you need. These business details are:
- Phone number
- Address
- Opening hours
It’s what should be called The Scorn of the Contact Page, and it plagues the internet. Don’t have this info only hidden on a contact page; you need to have it clearly displayed on your home page.
But wait a second, this will reduce my page clicks, my session duration and other SEO stats that I need for Google rankings!
Maybe slightly, but the benefits are far greater. Now you will be converting more customers, because you will no longer be turning away people who can’t find your contact details or aren’t in the mood for a scavenger hunt.
2. A primary Call To Action (followed by secondary and tertiary CTAs)
A Call To Action (CTA) is an element on your website (like a button) that invites a visitor to do an action. E.g. ‘Call Today!’. You can have multiple CTAs on a website, but the most important one should take precedence over the second most important and etc.
To make a primary CTA, you must think: what is the number 1 thing that I want people to do when they visit my website?
It’s probably: contact me!
But how? Email or phone number?
Probably phone number.
Now you’ve got it. Your site will have a large, always-visible Primary Call To Action saying ‘CALL 04## ### ### TODAY!’ It’s larger and more distinct than everything else on the page, and that tells people: this is the main thing that I should do.
But as a secondary option, you can still have a button saying ‘Email Us’. Except the formatting of this button will make it clear that it is secondary. For instance, it won’t ‘sticky’ to the top of the window (it won’t always be visible).
You then have even lower calls to action, such as ‘Like Page’ (on Facebook).
3. Make It Clickable
Imagine a man presses a button but nothing happens. It’s not a button, it’s just a dot. People feel like this man when they press something on their mobile phone or computer but it’s not a clickable thing.
It makes them feel even sillier to then select your phone number or email or address and then paste it into the app that will let them use it. This is a stupefyingly slow process, especially on mobile.
You need to make these business details clickable (links or buttons), so that they can easily click-to-call, click-to-email, and click-to-open-your-location-in-Google-Maps.
4. Reassurance from Real People
Browsing the internet is a solitary activity, and this causes some people to feel uncertain. People look to others when they make decisions, yet when they find your business website on the internet, they find themselves alone.
Hence the importance of social confirmation. You want to have ‘people’ on your page that the visitor can look to for assurance. You want to have
- Testimonials, and
- A Facebook Page Plugin.
Testimonials are so powerful that in 2016 new regulations were imposed by the ACCC to prevent fake reviews.
Similarly, the most powerful feature of the Facebook Page Plugin is the bar that shows the visitor which of their friends like you on Facebook. If this shows any friends, it is a supremely powerful confirmation of your business.
5. Impressive Stuff
It’s a fact that 75% of people admit to judging a company’s credibility by their website’s design. This is a first-impression snap judgement that we as humans can’t help but make within the first 1/20th of a second of seeing something, and it plays a huge part in the way that people see your business.
This is why you need web design that is modern and stylish, and other impressive stuff that will tell people that you are a very professional company.
Web design doesn’t come natural to anybody. It’s one of those things where you don’t know the mistakes you are making, even if you are a talented artist or a tech wizz or both. Hence, you should use a website template or, better yet, hire a web company.
Also, you will want other things on your site that will impress your visitors. Some websites try to impress by just having a lot of pages. This is the most laborious, costly and visitor-averse way to impress. We think the best way to make a one-page site impressive is by embedding a custom YouTube video of your business. Everyone knows videos are expensive and hard to make (but they don’t have to be), so even those that don’t watch the video will have a good impression.
Now for the optimum website for converting customers
We have implemented all the points in this article into a professional web layout that excels at converting customers. It’s a streamlined one-page website called a Jetsites, and you can See it here »