Your Website Sucks – Small Business Blunders, vol. 2

Hi, my name is Adam Lowe, with Adam Lowe Creative, and I help small businesses overcome challenges that we all face. Today, I’m going to talk about your website. Something that I see over and over again is small businesses that have absolutely terrible websites or websites that look like everybody else’s. So here’s the deal, your website is your digital online presence. It represents you, it represents your company. Almost anybody that is going to do business with you, at some point or another is probably going to visit your website, so it really is in your best interest to make sure that it looks the best, and that it completely represents who you are, and that it speaks to your target audience.

https://youtu.be/1Z0AueXibQQ

So some of the things that you want to do are make sure that you’ve got great visuals in there, whether you’re a consulting company or a retail shop you need to have fantastic photos, and even these days videos. So this is going to be something that gives your website that little bit of personal touch. Now stock photography is great, and I whole heartily using it on your website, but you really should mix that in there with some custom photography as well, because you want something that’s going to be personal to your own business.

If you’re a professional services company, you want to pay particular attention to your About us page, because your people are your most valuable commodity, so you want to make sure that everyone’s got a great profile picture. That there’s some standardization there, even if you’re not sending them all to the same photographer, at least try to have a consistent look between everybody. You also want to make sure that their bio reads well. And that it presents them the way that you want them to be presented. You don’t want a company full of scientists and engineers that you’re super proud of to have bios that read like a 5th grader’s homework assignment.

You also want to make sure that there’s a very clear way for your customers to contact you. This is huge. There are so many websites that I see these days just have a single generic contact form, and I get it. I understand that people are afraid to put their phone number and their email address on the website. That they think that they’re going to get spammed. They think that they are going to get phone calls from lord know who, but the fact is you need to make it easy, and you need to give your customers every way possible for them to reach you. So that means putting your phone number, putting your email address front and center, and making sure that where ever people are coming from, whether it’s from their cell phone or their desktop or a tablet that they’re just a click away from getting in touch with you. A simple form is a great and a lot of people do like sending their information through a form because it guides them a little bit, but some people also like picking up the telephone.

The last thing, is to make sure that your website is optimized for SEO, because we know that Google right now owns the world, and that if your website can’t be found essentially your business doesn’t exist, so get together, make sure that you have a great web designer. Make sure that you have a web designer that understands SEO, and that knows how to work with SEO, knows how to work with Pay Per Click Campaigns, and that they can make your website, your Pay Per Click, your SEO all that stuff meshed together to bring you the business that you need. Okay, until next time, take care.