In the spotlight: Websites

First impressions are important, and with your website being the first opportunity for people to see your business and the work you offer, it’s essential to make a positive impact!

With most of our Certified Installers having their own website, we have outlined some of the most important features that will not only increase the likelihood of your site appearing in web searches, but will encourage potential customers to spend more time on your pages and as a result, choose you to complete their job.

How to improve your existing website

Impact of the homepage

Studies have shown that it takes just 0.05 seconds for a user to form an opinion of your site and decide whether they will remain on the page or leave. The easiest way to capture their attention and encourage them to continue browsing is by improving the design. This includes:

• Making sure your site has a premium feel, displaying eye-catching imagery relevant to your trade at the top of the page as well as a clear navigation bar
• Making content scannable- users have been found to spend less than 6 seconds on each page, meaning they have to be able to see what they are looking for easily or they will miss it and navigate elsewhere. For this reason, avoid including large chunks of text on the first page and instead use interesting headings with short descriptions that will easily lead them to the areas of the site they are interested in.
• Splitting up content- to help make your page navigable, try to split content up by using images and colours to make the information easier to process. This means not leaving large blocks of the same colour on the page, as important information may be overlooked which prevents the user from finding what they are searching for.
• Don’t overuse animation- it may work well to include some aspects of moving graphics to draw the users’ attention to particular information (carousels at the top of your page to display different projects or content ‘unfolding’ as the user scrolls down your site).  However, to prevent your site from looking too busy, try to limit the movement on your page if it is rather content heavy (large bodies of text or ‘busy pictures’ with a lot of elements) as this will make it harder for users to find what they are looking for and potentially navigate away from the page.
• Improve the user experience- If potential customers know what they are looking for, it’s important that you make it as easy as possible to find. That means making the most of the navigation bar, ensuring the titles of pages are self-explanatory and making it easy for your users to switch between pages no matter where they find themselves on a page. This may involve using a floating navigation bar so they don’t have to scroll all the way to the top of page or including simple buttons at the bottom that automatically take them back to the top.

Testimonials and projects pages

People love to see images of your work, as this not only gives them inspiration for their own homes, but also shows off what you and your business do. Including a gallery is a good way to demonstrate your previous work, but we would also suggest including a ‘projects’ section to your site that allows you to group all your content from a project in one place. This makes it easy for potential customers to see the ‘before’ and ‘after’ images, as well as the customer’s testimonial, so they can get a true feel for the impact of the job.

CTAs

Similar to your Facebook page, it’s important to give the users of your site actions to follow. These may include following you on your social pages to stay up to date with your work or signing up to a regular newsletter, but it is likely that your most important call to action is asking users to contact you about an estimation. To make sure this attracts the attention of visitors to your site, position this in a prominent place (such as at the top of the site or in the navigation bar) to make it easier for users to click.

Further things to consider

SEO

Once again, in order to increase the likelihood of your website appearing towards the top of customer web searches, there are several features you should consider.

• Key word phrases- identify what users are likely to search for when looking for your services/content and then include them frequently across your site and pages (but make sure they are used in a natural way and not doubled up so that sentences and titles don’t make sense).
• Content updates- make sure that you keep your content up to date, as this indicates a more relevant site, which search engines take into consideration when ranking results.

Optimise for mobile

With many people choosing to browse the internet on their smartphones, it is important that their experience of your site is just as good if not better on their mobiles than when they are viewing it on desktop. With 57% of internet users saying they wouldn’t recommend a business with a poorly designed website on mobile, it’s vital that you consider the user experience on this device to make sure you don’t miss out on potential jobs and customer referrals.

This means that when designing your website, you need to make sure it is optimised for use on mobile, so that users can easily navigate your pages and find what they are looking for. Most web builders take this into consideration when helping you design, but be sure to test all your pages across multiple devices to ensure all users will have a good experience regardless of whether they are on a computer, mobile or tablet.

Google analytics

Although you may know who your customers are based on the relationship you have with them, it’s also essential that you get to know the online activity of visitors to your site. This includes how they have been directed there, what they search for when they are on your site and how they interact with your pages.

The best way to do this is by utilising software such as Google Analytics, which monitors their activity and provides useful and easy-to-interpret reports.

Some of the stats you can learn from this tool includes:

• Understanding key word phrase searches to include more of these across your site and therefore improve its SEO
• Seeing what platforms are successfully driving people to your site, therefore determining where is best to publish content (they may be coming from places you didn’t expect such as Pinterest or other social media accounts of your previous customers)
• Understanding which parts of your site users are most interested in so that you can delete or edit content which they do not spend a long time engaging with
• Understanding how effective your current calls to action are and possibly editing them or moving them to monitor their effect

Visit this site for more information on how to setup google analytics and this page to help you to interpret and therefore make the most of the data.

Make your website secure

Due to the large number of threats to personal information whilst browsing the internet, online safety is a priority for a lot of people, especially when they are being asked to give our their personal information. Studies have shown that 85% of people will not continue browsing a site if it is not secure, which means users may not stick around to browse your site if they are faced with the ‘not secure’ warning in the URL bar.

If you are asking users to fill out enquiry forms so that you can contact them about a potential job, they may be less likely to submit their details if they don’t think they can trust your site, which means you may be missing out on potential customers.

In addition to this, Google uses a site’s security to determine its rank in search results. This means that the more secure your site is, the more likely it is to appear at the top of search results when customers are looking for your services.

To learn more about making your site secure, visit this link.

How quickly does it take your pages to load?

Another overlooked feature of a website is the length of time it takes for pages to load. 40% of people have reported that they will leave a website if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds, which means you could be missing out on leads if people have to wait a while for your content to load.

Depending on the web builder you have used, there are multiple ways you can improve the speed of your site. To find out more about these methods, visit https://www.bitcatcha.com/blog/14-lighting-tricks-to-speed-up-your-website/ where you can test the current speed of your site and discover ways to improve it.

Important steps to maintain your website

Keep it up-to-date

The best way to encourage users to browse your site is by keeping it updated with your new projects and announcements. Not only will this keep them interested (as who wants to keep browsing the same content they’ve seen before?), but it will once again improve the SEO of your site due to Google prioritising sites that are maintained.

Respond to customer feedback and questions

People have more favourable opinions of businesses who personally respond to their feedback, therefore in order to portray the efficient and friendly service that you offer, make sure your presence on your site is known and that you’re happy to respond to any queries people may have.

Continue to link it to your social media and vice versa

Not only will this encourage visitors to explore your social platforms and therefore see more of your work, but by sending them to each of your platforms, these ‘backlinks’ will enable your sites to rank higher in search results, meaning more people will be able to see your business pages when looking for your service.

No matter how people come across your business (whether that’s through social media or word of mouth recommendations), your website is likely to be the online destination they will look for when researching your company. For this reason, it’s important that you offer them the best experience and up-to-date information so that they are likely to turn their ‘browsing’ into an enquiry and eventually a job.

For a more detailed guide on how to develop your website, visit our previous post here.

Also, don’t forget to let us know if these tips have helped you by commenting on the VELUX Certified Installer Facebook Group.