When was the last time you took a good look at your website? Take a moment and pretend you are a potential new customer. Put yourself in that person’s shoes and try to see what they see. If you’re not the shy type, you can also offer to buy a stranger at a coffee shop a cup of coffee in exchange for them sitting down with you to give an honest review of your website. You might be really surprised to hear what they have to say and it could make a huge impact on your business.
Here at Handlr, we LOVE putting our website and apps in front of new people for user testing. Honest feedback is so valuable and it allows us to work towards building a product that people dream about. Monitoring your own website is a must, you want to know that everything is working as it should be in the best possible way. That is why software from companies such as https://www.apicasystems.com/monitoring/ can help significantly with achieving this.
Chances are you built a website around the value your business can bring to the community – listing services that you offer, prices and team members you have. All important parts of a solid business web page, but you’ve probably overlooked some of the most crucial components of your site. Many of these are so easy to do, you’ll be kicking yourself.
For example, did you know that building links to your website is an extremely effective way to boost your online presence? Put simply, link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. Each link is a way for users to navigate between pages on the internet. Generally speaking, the more high-quality websites that link to you, the more likely you are to rank well in search results. You can learn more about the importance of including link building and other similar search engine optimization (SEO) techniques in your marketing efforts by heading to websites such as LinkMoose.com.
So, with all of this in mind, let us now discover 5 simple things you might not be doing to optimize your business website.
- One of the most common mistakes small business owners make is not listing city, state, and zip codes that they service. This can be frustrating for new potential customers and frustrating for Google who is trying to display the best information to their customers who are searching for you. Listing zip codes serviced is vital to creating good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and it sometimes gets overlooked. Additionally, SEO is very important to the success of your business online. Without it, consumers would be unlikely to find your site and competitors will swoop in and steal clients. You can use Google My Business (GMB) to improve the SEO of your site and help it rank higher on search engine results pages, leading to it been seen more often by potential consumers. Sites like https://thedailysem.com/local-viking/ can be useful tools when it comes to managing GMB so that you can get the most out of the services on offer.
- Is your phone number prominently displayed and easy to find throughout your website? Is it clickable for mobile viewers to give you a call with just a tap? You got the potential new client to your site, but is your Call-To-Action button clear and visible. If you want more new customer calls, make sure your phone number is easy to find and tappable.
- This brings us to another point; is your website mobile friendly? The majority of people browsing the web these days do so from their smartphones. Recent studies suggest that 70% of web traffic is from mobile devices. If you don’t have a mobile optimized website, or even know how to optimize page speed, you’re far behind the times.
- Is your client list growing? Capturing emails and funneling them to Mail Chimp or other newsletter platforms is the easiest way to reach more customers. The easiest way to start capturing emails is by creating a contact form on your site and syncing it with MailChimp or another newsletter service. Another way you can capture emails is by giving new visitors a valuable piece of info in the form of an E-book or white page info guide. In order to receive the guide, they exchange their email. For example, if you own a pet business you could create a “Summer Guide for Battling Fleas” or if you own a car detailing business “10 Potential Hazards that Can Cause Damage to Your Paint Job”. The key is to make sure that your emails are valuable and not wasting anyone’s time.
- Once you’ve captured their emails, you’ll need to send them something of value. If you haven’t started one yet, try starting a simple blog with valuable tips to keep clients engaged and incentivized to share your helpful information with their friends. Driving more traffic to your website, lets Google know that your information is relevant and that people are finding value in your site.
For this week’s podcast we interviewed Josh Cary of PetsittingOlogy, pet industry expert and website guru, who walked us through all of the tips above. Josh shared with us his process for growing a business and how he helps clients optimize their websites every day. He also provided us with his biggest tips for standing out in a crowded market and how to one-up your competition with simple, smart steps.
SHOW NOTES:
Josh Cary / Petsittingology – https://petsittingology.com/
