I had the privilege recently of appearing on the This Mama Means Business podcast by Kylie Kelly.
Kylie is a photographer and entrepreneur who started this podcast for moms who want to enjoy motherhood AND build their business.
It’s a real look at the day to day juggle that we all do as business owners and parents, but with some helpful tips and tricks mixed in.
As moms with businesses, it's especially important that our websites are our 24-hour-salesperson. We need them to take on some of the heavy lifting so we have more time for other things. Not having a strategy is a missed opportunity to serve more people without having to go bang on doors to get sales. On this episode, I talked about three tricks to help your website convert better.
Here is the summary of what Kylie and I talked about:
So first I just thought I would start by talking about why it’s not just enough to just have a website. When you’re just starting out, often business owners think, “If I build it, they’ll come. If I put it out there it’ll draw the right customers.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that.
In this day and age where there’s so many distractions, people expect things to work quickly. Anytime someone online encounters a roadblock or hurdle, they leave.
Have you ever been on a website and you’re trying to view a product or read something only to get interrupted by too many pop-ups or ads. You might just give up.
That’s not including distractions you might be facing outside of what you’re doing on your computer. There might be something else going on.
It’s really easy for people to get pulled aside and to not do the things that you’re hoping for them to do on your website.
It’s important to have a strategy behind your website.
A website without a strategy is like a virtual paperweight.
It’ll just sit there. It doesn’t help anybody.
There are three elements to your website.
Copy: That’s all the written words that are on your website that tells people who you are and what you do.
There’s the Design: That includes the graphic elements, the colors, the shapes, the photos - basically the look and the feel.
Then there’s the Structure: This is the navigation - how people are moving through your site and how you’re taking them from point A to point B.
All three of those things should work together.
Here are three ways to use the above to help your website to convert better:
1. Choose your goals.
So, it’s important that you think about what are the two or three things that you really want people to do when they come to your website.
Obviously if you sell a product or if you sell a service, you want them to book you or buy your product. But most people won’t do that the first time they get to your website. It takes 7 encounters with a business for someone to get to know, like and trust them.
Make sure you have some other steps on your site that help them do that. This might be joining your email list or subscribing to your blog.
Whatever it is that could connect them with you a little bit more. Then make sure that all the paths in your website help people reach these goals.
So, for example, if it’s your email list, you want to provide opportunities for them to sign up in an enticing way. Make sure that it’s accessible and that they don’t have to search for it, and that there aren’t dead ends on your site. (Aa dead end is a page that doesn’t lead anywhere.)
Then on the flip side, you don’t want to send them on a treasure hunt either where you send them all over the place.
So number one is choose your goals.
2. Direct you your copy to the reader.
It's tempting when we first start out to want to include all your credentials and your background, and talk about yourself. Or in the case of a product, all you want to talk about is the features of the product and the things that it does.
But, we’re all inherently selfish.
When we go to a website, we want to know: What’s in it for us?
Why should I buy this? Why should I book this person? With that in mind, you want your website copy to be talking directly to them.
The word YOU is the most powerful word in the English language. Make sure that’s in there.
Many people write, “I help my clients with their needs.” But, if you change “their” to “your,” suddenly you’re talking to the person reading it.
You want them to come to your site and feel like you’re talking to them.
When they read it, they’re like: “Oh my gosh, this is going to help with my pain points and my struggles!”
Think through: What are those pain points? What are those hurdles that they’re facing and how do you help them with the transformation? How do you help them get from point A, which is where they’re struggling to point B, which is the solution.
3. Keep things simple and cohesive.
]You want everything on your website to be clear and work together.
Don’t use jargon. I know that we’re all so tempted to use our own language when we talk about what we do, but we have to pretend that that person has never encountered what it is we offer.
There are going to be people that have no idea what you’re talking about, regardless of your field. Make sure that you’re talking in a way that anybody can understand it.
Even if they do understand your industry, we all skim. Simple copy makes it so visitors don’t have to work too hard to understand what you’re saying.
The same goes for your website design. Leave a lot of white space so that people can just absorb what’s important instead of getting distracted by too much clutter.
Clutter is confusing and can pull them away from what you’re trying to tell them.
Make sure that your brand is reflected in your website. So whatever brand you’ve worked to establish using certain fonts, colors and your logo, apply it to your entire website and social media channels. You don’t want them to come to a page and it looks completely different.
If you apply these three things on your website, you will find people will stay longer and more visitors will do the things you want them to do on your site.
Need more help making sure your site is converting? Download my website audit checklist.
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