Living in Central Florida, seeing a roach is not a big deal. I remember when my wife and I first moved down here from the Chicago area many years ago, we were shocked to see roaches the size of small farm animals! – at least that’s how it seemed to us.
Can you imagine going to someone’s house for the first time, and as you walked up to the front door, you see paint peeling off the wood panels. The glass panes on either side of the door are so covered over with crusty dirt, you can’t see inside. The welcome mat at your feet is worn and coming unraveled at the edges, and you see nasty-looking roaches scurrying out from underneath.
Ugh! You want to get out of there as fast as you can. Unfortunately, there are many businesses, wonderful organizations who do great work and offer great services whose front door is woefully out-of-date and unkempt.
What I’m talking about is their website.
We live in a digital age. These days your website is akin to your front door. It’s where prospects and potential clients first show up. Even if you meet someone at a convention or seminar and hand your flyer or business card. The first thing someone will do when they get back to their office or in front of their computer is…. you guessed it, check out your website.
I know you don’t pay attention to your website. Most people don’t. They are too busy running the business. Even if you take time to check out your site, you are not seeing it through the same eyes, from the same perspective as a prospect. After all, you know what your business is about, so you see everything through that filter.
Here are some things to consider…if your website doesn’t measure up in each of these areas, it may be time to update it, or better yet overhaul it.
- Responsive – these days every website needs to adjust to a wide range of screen sizes from a 23” monitor to a 4” cell phone screen and everything in-between. If your website hasn’t been redone recently, it may not be designed in a responsive format.
- Flow – Rivers are not the only things that need to flow – your website needs to be designed in a sequence of panels that will move a prospect logically through an emotional path that tells them: I’ve landed in the right spot -> this is a company that can help me -> they feel my pain -> they understand me -> they’ve helped others with problems worse than mine -> I understand what I need to do next.
You can have all sorts of drop-downs that offers more details. But before people will start trolling through endless pages, they need to get comfortable that you have what it takes to solve their problem.
- Feel – how do customers feel about themselves when they identify with your website. Does your website convey that you are warm, professional, high-tech, innovative, trustworthy? The words you use, the design pallet you create will create an environment that causes your potential customers to feel something – hopefully something good, not just about your company, but about themselves. Will they be impressed even proud, if they were features on your website as one of your customers?
- Don’t be obtuse – by this I mean, make sure its crystal clear what you do and more importantly how you help your clients. Don’t make people guess. You don’t want your website to be like a mystery novel. If customers have to stop and figure out where to go next or what is their best next step, they will just leave.
- Be memorable – Remember show and tell day at school when you were a kid? You’d come home and there was always one kid’s pet, one kid’s talent, one kid’s favorite toy that stuck out in your mind. This is what you want for your website – do, say or offer something that makes people remember your site – better yet, makes them want to tell their friends.
- Offer value – it’s a crowded world out there. You are probably not the only game in town. What is it that you can offer that makes you more valuable to your customers? You must be really, really clear about this. Perhaps you are taking more time telling prospective clients what you do and not doing enough to envision them on how much better you can make their life. People don’t care about what you do. What they care about is how you can help them, what problem they have that you will solve and what value you bring to the table.
- Tell Them where to go – last but not least, make sure your website has multiple calls-to-action spread throughout your website. At every turn, invite your visitors to connect with you, download a free product, make an appointment, order a product, call for a quote, DO SOMETHING! Always tell visitors where you want them to go next, what you want them to do next and make it easy and risk free to take that leap.
If your gut is telling you its time to take a fresh look at your website. Maybe it needs a make-over. Maybe it needs an overhaul. Maybe your front door just needs a fresh coat of paint or someone to throw out that roach-invested welcome mat and buy a new one. We are here to help. Contact us. We will be happy to do a free front door do–over website evaluation for you. Don’t let your digital front door scare away valuable prospects. Call us at: 407-563-4806 or email us at info@ahigherlife.com.
