Let’s start with the look and feel of your website. Your online presence is a visual reflection of your business. To make it killer, you need to be sure your website reflects your branding. Your brand is more than your logo. It’s a combination of experiences and impressions that you’ve established for your business. In many case, your website will be your first chance to make an impression and promote your brand to potential clients. Professional branding and a well-designed logo promotes a positive impression. Make sure your site reflects your brand identity.
According to Google, Google Analytics “provides powerful digital analytics for anyone with a web presence, large or small.” It’s simply the best system for analyzing and optimizing your website. Read “Why Every Business Website Needs Google Analytics” from deepfootprint.com to learn how to use this incredible resource of information on your website.
Even the best designer can’t save a website with photography that doesn’t meet professional standards. Bad images cheapen a site, plus they have an impact on how viewers feel about your business. The purpose of a website is to put forth a positive impression of your business. To appear professional, reputable, and trust-worthy, you need to include high-quality images that stand out in their use of color, lighting, and balance. In addition, be sure the imagery throughout the site remains consistent, and avoid generic images. Want your website to be killer? It is well worth the money to invest in either hiring a professional photographer or purchasing good stock photography for your website.
Including testimonials on your website is a sure-fire way to grow our customer base. As individuals, we tend to trust the opinion of others. Testimonials are persuasive and they can establish credibility. Using real-life testimonials, including the full name and title (if applicable) of the person leaving them, is a proven way for your to sell your products and services to prospective customers before they even contact you.
Including a call to action button on your website is a quick and easy way to direct your visitor to a direct route and accomplish a goal. Consider what you want your visitor to do when they land on your homepage. Do you want them to find your services instantly, sign up for something, have them to contact you, or request that they join your mailing list? Use Calls to Action! Learn more about how to use CTAs that rock in this informative article from HubSpot: http://bit.ly/1iya8wA
Your website might have a cool design and be stacked with great content, but if it isn’t mobile-friendly, it won’t be killer. One-third of online traffic is mobile which means if you don’t have a mobile-friendly site, you could be leading potential customers to your competitors site. Also, local businesses benefit from a mobile-friendly site because more customers are using mobile devices to search for them. Not to mention search engines like Google and Bing will penalize websites that are not mobile-friendly by reducing their rank in a search. Take this test to see if your website is mobile-friendly: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/. If it fails the test, time to upgrade to a mobile-friendly website.
Business blogging (writing about subject matter related to your business) gets your business more online visibility. Business blogs drive traffic to your website when posts are found in online searches, while creating opportunities to generate new leads and customers. By adding pages to your website through blog posts, you make your site more likely to appear in search engines. Check out HubSpot’s article “Why Blog? The Benefits of Blogging for Business and Marketing” to learn more.
Effective email newsletters will help you connect with customers, as well as boost traffic to your website In addition, they are a highly effective tool for building an online community. What’s important is growing your list of subscribers. How do you do that? Offer an easy to use call to action button on your website and make it obvious. Then use a simplified form and offer incentives for new subscribers. More importantly, offer your subscribers good content that makes them want to stay. Website Magazine offers some great tips on how to better engage email subscribers in this article: http://bit.ly/1U9CD4m.
It’s simple. If you want a killer website for your small business, it needs to be on a WordPress platform. Why? Well, there are many reasons businesses are moving to the world’s most popular content-management system: ease of use, search engine friendly, great support system, completely customizable, plus much more…and it’s free! Read the article “25 Reasons Your Business Should Switch to WordPress” by Entrepreneur.com.
