Your Website Engagement Questions Answered

It is essential that you build a Website that can engage, inform, and convert potential customers.  Design it in a way that will bring in the right type of visitors.

In your effort to increase the ratio of visitors to qualified leads, it would be beneficial to look at:

• What is happening on each page to hold your visitors’ interest.
• What actions you want visitors to take.
• What appeals to that visitor?
• What the visitor needs to do to get more information or make a contact.
• What you could be doing better.

At this Stage, most of your work will be on your Website and not on your marketing channels.

The following are some inexpensive ways you can use technology to help present your business in a larger and more professional manner.  Presenting your business in this way will help fight the small business trust bias.  Many of these tools will help run and scale your business in a much more efficient manner.

Building Trust: Prospects First Impressions

The Awareness Stage lays down a lot of the work to get prospects to your Website.  The first impression they get must:

• Show that your business can be trusted.
• Back up the message you gave out during the marketing method that drove them to your Website.

In order for your business to be seen trustworthy, first impressions are lasting impressions that would be ingrained in the minds of your prospects.  Even the smallest details matter when it comes to gaining their trust.

Due to your actions at the Awareness Stage, your Website is one of the first places prospects will go to check you out.  So its design should be kept up-to-date.  Keeping everything updated will speak volumes about your professionalism.  Along with the look and feel of your site, you should ensure that your marketing messages remain current and in line with your Brand.

Put yourself in the shoes of your prospects in developing your approach; evaluate your Website as you might if you were a potential customer and then tailor how you want to position it accordingly.  When you browse through it, consider:

• What does it say about my business?
• Does it have a professional look?
• Does it have the right information?
• Is desired information quick and easy to find?
• What’s the perceived value?
• What’s the next step?

Your Website, while informative, must attract and clearly show visitors its value while delivering a message that it’s one you would want to return to.  It should reflect what and who your audience is and what you’ve determined the audience has greatest interest in.

It shouldn’t be difficult to navigate, or make demands on customers and potential customers time or efforts to get more content that could just as well be placed as a link.

Show prospects that you’re real by including your company details:

• Physical address (no PO Box) – Even if you work from home, you can use virtual office services to meet customers and to display a business address.
• Phone number prominently listed at the top of every page – it can say a lot about you.  Using a national toll-free number or a toll-free word or “vanity” number can give your business a national and accessible feel.
• Email address (must be your own domain; no Hotmail, Gmail, or other ISP-issued email address) – which looks more trustworthy, [email protected] or [email protected]?
• Even something as simple as live chat box (including employee name builds trust even more)
• Links to your social media profiles

Testimonials and reviews also help to show that others trust you.  When prospects see that other people trust you, then trust is built since people care about what other people think about anything that’s important to them.  An image of a review on your homepage, a quote in the header, or feeds from a review software.

If other organizations trust you (news sources, businesses, etc.) show their approval of your business, also include it in your Website.  Include which news sources you’ve been featured in.

Include any awards given to you.  Show them on your Website even if you think they’re minor acknowledgments that you might think your visitors wouldn’t care about.  It’s all about displaying a sense of trustworthiness in the minds of your prospects and customers.

Display a money back guarantee with a return policy in all of your messages.  This shows trust in your company as this gives customers a feeling that your business is incurring most of the risk.

Show visitors that you care about the security of their data as it will have a positive impact on building trust.  Display things on your Website such as:

• Credit card payments you accept (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, PayPal, Amazon, Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc.).
• Logos of security tools (Verisign, Google Certified Store, etc.).

Try to keep everything on your Website cohesive with all your other marketing channels.  Your landing page being congruent with your advertisement, social media channels, etc.  Ensure that your Website also properly displays well on mobile and tablet.