Are You Making It Just Too Hard For Customers To Do Business With You?

When local customers arrive on your business website they are generally looking for three things :

Your phone number
Your location (if you have a physical location, as opposed to being an e-commerce business)
Your deals and special offers

Now, of course there are lots of other aspects to designing a website which is compelling to visitors, to persuade them to do business with you. But those 3 things I’ve just listed are essential…and you would be amazed how many businesses make you play ‘hunt the needle in the haystack’ to get that information.

How about making it an easy seamless experience instead?

Take the phone number for example.

Unless You’re In Undercover Espionage, Make It Easy For Me To Phone You Now!

Even though businesses have a number of different ways customers can get in touch (such as Facebook messaging, and a live chat function on the website) sometimes, as a customer we just want to be able to pick up the phone and talk to a helpful real person on the other end.

And we want to be able to do it right now!

If you make me have to go hunting in the footer of your website, for the tiny link to your ‘contact’ page….guess what – I’m either going to click away to your competitor in the hope that they are going to make it EASY for me to ring them, or I’m going to be feeling grumpy by the time I actually find your business’s phone number to ring.

So where should you put your phone number?

Ideally you want to make sure your business’s phone number shows up in the same place on every page of your website, so the best way to do this is to have it in the Header, and the Footer.

You also want to make sure that you have it on your Contact page as well.

Plus make sure that it is BIG and bold. Far too many businesses still don’t have mobile responsive design on their website (that scales and stays readable when viewed on smart-phones and tablets) so all too often your customers have to do that painful pinching and expanding thing on the touch screen to read your miniscule phone number on their smart-phone.

Now what about your location?

I’m New In Town, In My Car And Can’t FIND Your Business! Where Are You?

This is simple. Google have very kindly given you the option of claiming your Google Plus Local page (which integrates with Google Maps) – where you can add your business details, pictures, opening hours, and people can read reviews left by your customers.

If you claim and optimise your Google Plus Local Page and Maps listing you are much more likely to show up in the search results – with a handy map – which is essential if you want to be found by customers searching on their mobile devices, on the go.

Why Should I Pick You Over The Competition?

So you’ve made it easy for new customers to phone you up, and find your business. What about that final piece of the jigsaw? Deals and special offers.

Competition is fierce so it always helps if you give NEW customers a reason to do business with you. Think about a way you can differentiate yourselves in some way to stand out, then make sure your new customers know about it.

It could be a special offer, or free delivery, or a faster turnaround.

Make sure you put this on your website. It doesn’t need to be complicated – it could even be as simple as a big graphic saying ‘We love to welcome new customers! Be sure to ask for your ‘New Customer Bonus’

(Tip – make sure you look after your current customers as well – that way everyone is happy!)

So there you have it. Three simple ways to make it EASY for hot leads to become paying customers.

If in doubt – ask some friends who aren’t too ‘close’ to your business to take a look at your website – on desktop and out and about on a mobile – with the fresh eyes of a new customer wanting the goods or services that your business offers.

Ask them to give you honest feedback on how easy they felt it was to contact you, find you, and feel valued as a potential new customer.

Go on – you’ll be glad that you did.

Because remember this. The hot prospects who DON’T become your paying customers because your website made it too hard will never tell you that. They’ll just go to your competitors instead – and that’s probably a customer lost to you forever.

This is just several of the dozens of things we look at on our clients’ websites, to make it easier for them to get more customers and make more profits. It all starts with their Website & Online Presence MOT.