Ask your own customers what they expect to see when they look at your website. But generally it will include these ‘basic’ 10 items below
10 things people expect to find on your website.
1. What you do – what problem do you solve? What value do you add? Make it clear in the fewest number of words. Do not drone on about features or specs, but do have them available somewhere for people who want to read about them.
2. Who you are – why are you good at solving that problem? What qualifiactions or certifications do you have?
3. Why you do it – what drives you to do what you do? What makes you stand out? Many people buy why you do something as much as what it is you do.
4. Where you do it – which geographic areas do you cover/serve? Do you charge more outside that area?
5. FAQS – answer their common questions. Listen to the questions you get asked verbally or by email etc, then answer these on the website.
6. Why they should deal with you – add details of any guarantees, promises, warranties, experience etc. Show any awards, media mentions, certifications and qualifications, type of clients, numbers of clients. Show photos of your Team members and Partners, include years of service etc. Use high quality original concise written text and photographs. And ideally add video to show your attention to detail and quality of your work. Typos and bad grammar will not help your cause.
7. Why you are the best choice – To create trust, use independent customer reviews and case studies, video and written to show Social Proof or social validation. A good portfolio of case studies with video testimonials would be ideal. Aloing with Google Reviews, Facebook Reviews and Linkedin Recommendations.
8. Show your domain authority or expert status by offering useful tips and advice on your chosen subject. If you know it all, show it all. Be generous with your advice. Show where you have been published or interviewed on your topic.
9. Newsletter – let people sign up in case they want to stay informed about valuable offers and useful tips from you or your business. The vast majority of people do NOT want to sign up for a Newsletter. So, only offer this option if you are going to invest in creating one that is worth reading.
10. Your contact details, a telephone number, preferably a landline, an email address and a contact form. Plus instant chat could be good to offer, if you can respond in real time.
Some or all of this will seem very obvious to you, but have a look at your own website and see if you actually have all these points covered. Maybe you also need to include a clear button for pricing which is a key one for many visitors. Or a page for Support or Shop or Pay Fees.
Logical userflow
Your website needs to be easy to navigate, fast to load, include great relevant content and allow people move freely and be able to contact you via a form, email, telephone or Instant Chat. Avoid sliders of images on the home page. Try to imagine the visitor is walking in to your physical location, office or store, how do they know where to go to find what they want. What kind of signposting do you use. Get some people to test this for you and get feedback, so that you can continually improve. Check your website and its navigation and forms on a mobile phone too. Ideally test it on a few different mobile phones.
Test your contact forms weekly. Every page should have one main CTA Call to Action, either to contact us, or download our PDF or see the next related article, place an order or get a special offer etc.
Whilst every page done well, will hopefully funnel your visitors to a decision or action, any individual page done badly may funnel them away from you, possibly for good, on to some other competitor website. Imagine you went in to a legal practice office and there was nobody at reception or if there was someone, but they simply ignored you – what would you do?
