5 Key Elements Your Website May Be Missing

5 Key Elements Your Website May Be Missing

When providing a service to your customers, it’s always best to provide the right tool to make sure you are converting them into new customers. Building a website isn’t quite enough to attract new business. We’ve compiled a list below that will help your potential customers feel confident that your business can help address their problem.

What information should I make available on my website?

When you ask yourself what information should I make readily available on my website, just think about how you may go about hiring a contractor for a job you need completed. You may ask family and friends for recommendations or even keep an eye out for different companies that are active in your neighborhood. You would also probably check to see if that company had a website where you could browse through photos of their completed projects to get a sense of their specialties and see if they were right for your project.

There’s a lot of ways to think about your website. Does your website clearly list what areas you service? Can a potential new customer quickly and easily get a feel for what services you offer? Do you have testimonials from satisfied customers, and photo galleries of some of your best work? Is your contact info clear, accurate, and readily available?

For each of the above mentioned questions, the answers must be a resonating “Yes”. Let’s take a look below at each of those elements more in detail.

What do I need to make a well-designed business website?

As we’ve laid out above, a good website for your business needs to include the following:

1. Areas currently serviced

This can either be a single page listing the towns and areas your business is able to reach or you could make a separate page for each town. The latter approach is effective if the size of your team or area you service limits how often you can be present in any given area – for instance, a tree removal service may prefer to limit miles traveled on any given day.

2. Services you offer

As with the “Areas you service” category, you can either decide to list out your services on a single page or describe each service on its own page. If your services are unique, or if your potential customers expect additional information to ensure you are the correct provider for their needs.

3. Customer Testimonials

Testimonials are a good way to curate and highlight your satisfied customers. Your website visitors aren’t stupid and a majority of them will leave your site as soon as they feel you’re trying to do the “hard sell”. No matter what promises YOU make, your customers will believe what others have to say far more than you (unless you’ve already established yourself as an authority on a subject or already have a solid relationship with them). If you’re just starting out and don’t have any customers yet, volunteer your services or give away some of your products then ask your customers for feedback. If you’ve done a good job or your product is useful, they will be happy to do so.

4. Photo Gallery

Images are a critical part of your web design. At the highest level, images help your visitors connect and feel comfortable on your site. Taking the time to invest in high quality photos can mean the difference between potential customers choosing your company over the competitor down the street. Not only do high resolution, professional photos improve the likelihood of a call or a sale, search engines like Google and Yahoo favor original content (photos) over those using stock photography helping your site ultimately rank better in terms of SEO.

5. Contact Information

Your contact page, which typically provides an email address, a phone number, social media links and a physical address, is crucial in your online marketing. In a world where Yellow Pages are now redundant when it comes to finding businesses, instant gratification is key. Website viewers want what they came for and they want it fast. The significance of a contact page underlines the importance of search engine optimization as well. With people using search engines as a modern-day version of window shopping, supplying important information to help identify where your store is located and how to get in touch is a must.

It may seem obvious but those five elements are the keys to a clear and effective service website. The information you provide to your potential customers by including each elements is enough for them to determine if you are active in their location, if you can perform the work they need done, and if your past and current customers are satisfied with your work.

An effective service website should do one thing above all else for your business: Provide the information a potential customer needs to convince them that you can solve their immediate problem. If you make the basic information easily accessible, suddenly 15 seconds of online interaction could turn into a loyal customer.