Unless you have a walk-in storefront, it is likely that your website will be the first point of contact between your business and potential customers. The time between someone landing on your website and deciding to stay on it is limited. So, your website should create a good impression and be informative about your business to keep people on it.
There are five questions that your website should immediately answer about your business to attract and retain audiences:
Simple to answer, right? Think back to a time where you spent over two minutes on a website, yet you still weren't sure of what the business did. Clearly define who you are as a business on your website so that your audience will understand.
As a marketer, I'll pick on the marketing industry for a second.
Sometimes a typical conversation with a marketer goes like this:
Person 1: So what do you do?
Marketer: I'm in marketing.
Person 1: Cool! What exactly do you do in marketing?
Marketer: I help businesses with their marketing, and I help them get more leads and awareness.
Person 1: Well, what's your specialty? What tools do you use?
Marketer: Everything!
That make-believe conversation doesn't do anything for the person asking the questions. Calling yourself a "Marketing Expert" isn't enough.
Your website has to clearly define exactly what you do and what services and/or products your business offers.
Ultimately, there needs to be an indication of what value your company and its products/services bring to end customers (and if your company is B2B, you need to indicate the value you bring to your customers' customers). It's not enough to talk about what your products/services do.
What value do you bring to the table? Why should people trust your business and offering over the alternatives?
Is the product/service mix you're offering your company's singular focus? Will your company have a superior focus on it than the competition? Is it part of a bigger mix of products or services? Is your company's size and wide focus a strength?
Ensure you're able to answer these questions clearly.
It should be obvious on your site how customers receive the benefit of your products/services. Do you offer set monthly pricing? Custom pricing? In the case of physical services, do you go to them or do they come to you? For digital and other intangible services, where is the work conducted? Locally or outsourced?
It should be obvious how you work with customers. Through a partnership approach? More of an outsourced model at an arms length?
Delivering these messages in a clear and concise way is a skill that takes years to polish.
You need to guarantee quality, otherwise you won't make the impression you need to make with your target audiences.
Explaining who you are, what you do, the values you and your products/services offer, and how your business works allows potential customers to familiarize themselves with all the company information they want and need, increasing the likelihood of them working with your business.
While your website should be looking to answer these 5 major questions about your company, you should also look at applying these 3 tactics to keep people on your website.