The purpose of a business website is to provide your potential clients or customers who go online to access your business and make doing business with you, rather than someone else, an attractive proposition. The trick to getting what you want out of your sites, such as leads or sales, is to have a website design that attracts the visitors you want and encourages them to do what you want them to do.
Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your website that complete the desired goal a conversion out of the total number of people who visited your website. A business website with a high conversion rate is an indication of successful marketing and web design, it means that you are attracting the right people and they want what you’re offering, and they’re easily able to get it!
To have a website that has a high conversion rate first thing you need to do is to look at your site design (or your plans for one) and make sure it has these qualities.
1. Professional Appearance
Your website needs to look professional, after all, it represents your company online. Cookie-cutter website templates or homemade websites stand out like sore thumbs and do nothing to encourage anyone to do business with you. When it comes to your business website you should consider hiring a professional.
2. Great Content
People come to your business website to see information about your business, and your products and/or services. They are already interested, so provide them the right content that will convince them that you are the company worthy of their business.
For instance, if you an auto-repair shop, additional information on keeping your car last longer and simple DIY tips are great value-added content. If you sell water softener parts, provide not only detailed information on your product lines but how-to information on installation.
3. Easy for Doing Business
Somewhere on your website, you need to have a page that has your full contact information, including your mailing address and your phone number(s). It is not good enough to just have an e-mail address and putting your contact information on every page is even better.
4. Online Payment Options
If you want people to buy your product, you must make it easy for them. Invest in a good shopping cart, and make sure that you offer payment options such as credit cards and other online payment options, such as PayPal.
5. Address Your Visitor’s Security Concerns
Customers are concerned about transmitting their personal information, such as name, phone numbers, email address, and especially credit card numbers, over the web. You need to have the appropriate technology (such as SSL) in place and let your potential customers know about it and having a privacy concerns page is a really good thing, it will give your visitors more peace of mind knowing that you respect their privacy.
6. Search-Engine Optimization
Now your website showcases your business and the products or services you offer in a way that makes doing business with your company easy. What is next then? Help the prospective customer find your website on first-page search results.
People are busy they do not have time to click from page to page each time they do a google search, so you as a business owner need to make sure that your website always pops to the top of Google search results.
You need to give every page of your business website the best chance of ranking well in the search engines, so when people search for your products or services your website will be the first thing that a potential client will see and can click to go to. In a previous article: How good SEO can help sets you apart from the competition? It explains that doing proper SEO can help lift your website above your competitors.