In today’s world, having a website is a must! Time, effort, and an assortment of other things go into making a great website. We have jam-packed this post with
as much information we could without making it seem overwhelming. While you could allow your website to get lost among all of the other websites out there, we suggest you do these easy fixes to prevent that from happening. Who doesn't want their website to stand out?! In fact, you should start making these changes right away.
Quick & Important Notes:
- Most customers would like to know more about the company; you are, in fact, going into their home or business. --- Having an “About Us” section, having links to social media sites, and/or telling about your company on your homepage is a great idea.
- Customers want to know what services you provide – Sometimes they want in-depth descriptions, while others may only want the basic information. This is where it pays to know your customer base.
- Blogs help Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and can help build brand trust and awareness.
- Customers want to know when your business is available and how to contact you: make sure those items are easy to find and accurate.
- Add additional pages if you feel you need to. Some people add “FAQs,” “Testimonials” (video or typed), “Award/Certifications,” “Specials/Coupons,” etc. Find what fits best for your customers! Go to Google Analytics to see what pages are being visited the most. (Make sure to put your IP address as an exception, so you are not viewing how often YOU visit your own website.)
- There are many “businesses” out there, make sure yours looks professional by following the below guideline. Also, have links to your top pages (navigation bar and anything else important) at the bottom of your page along with current copyright information.
The 8 Must-Have Features:
We're all busy. If you read to this point, you have many key elements to a good website. However, if you read below, we go even further to make your website great! Some of the items are elaborations of the aforementioned items because they are that important. If you change your website after reading this blog, create a brand new one, or have already optimized your website, share your store in the comments below. We'd love to hear what you did. Maybe you could take before and after screen shots? If not to share, at least for you. (We wish we would have.)
1. Contact Information
If you want potential and existing customers to contact you through your website, you need the contact information in any easy to find place and have accurate information. Actually, we're known for having various areas on our website that show our contact information or links to it. We found that most businesses do this too. General rule of thumb is to have a dedicated spot on the navigation bar for your contact information. If you chose to have it in another place (highly suggested), we you should have it on your homepage. You are not limited to those two pages though!
Make sure that you have a valid telephone number listed for
your customers and potential customers to contact you.
If you have a form for them to contact you through the site,
check it periodically to ensure that it is working properly.
If you have any other information, such as an e-mail address
or physical address, make sure that the information is correct.
We have notice that maps are often pointing to an incorrect location. You may have to go to Google, Bing, or Yahoo! and ask them to correct the map location for your business. Google allows you to fix the map location yourself if you have verified your business address with them.
It can be frustrating to a potential customer if they call
and no one answers, especially if the hours are not online or said you were
open. Therefore, ensure your hours are correct on your website and anywhere you have your business listed!
2. Logo Design & Appearance
If you want to be seen as a true professional, make sure you
have a logo. Whether professionally created or not, it must look the part! This
logo should be the same one that you use on your business cards, on you van/truck, on
your invoicing, etc. You can have a simple or a complex logo as long as it looks
clean and clear.
3. Images and Videos
Visitors can’t just know how well you clean carpets, hard
surfaces, upholstery, etc or how well your company cleans and restores after
fire, smoke, water damage, etc by your name or a list of services you do. They
can, however, be “awed” by the before and after photos of extreme jobs. These
photos should be high-resolution and professional. Cell phone pictures are usually too small and
fuzzy to work for websites, unless your cell phone has a high-resolution
camera.
It's suggested to have photos on the first page. Depending on how
you set-up your site, it may be applicable to have photographs on multiple
pages. (This is discussed below.)
Lighting is an important factor when taking photographs,
especially if you are trying to emphasize a particular subject (stain, mold,
dirt, etc). Sometimes using the on-camera flash will make the image too bright
or even too dark in some spots. Try the flash first. IF the photograph does not
turn out well, try one of these techniques. Open the blinds or shades of nearby
window(s) to allow more light. If there are no windows or the room is still too
dark, try shining a cell phone light on the subject - about five to ten feet
away. (The “flash light” for cell phones come standard with most iPhones but
will need to be downloaded for Androids.)
Videos are great ways to demonstrate a step of the cleaning
process or the entire cleaning process you use to the potential customer. This
could be on your first page or where you detail about that service/cleaning
process.
Video testimonials are great ways to have real customers
tell about their experience with you and your company. We suggest keeping these
videos short: 30 seconds – 1 min. You may choose to have a “favorite”
testimonial on your homepage but it is wise to keep the majority of them on a
dedicated “testimonials” page.
4. Clean Graphics
It’s the 21st century; and there are plenty of
inexpensive and free online graphics as well as cameras that you can use. Some
templates even come stocked with great graphics!
5. Navigational Ease
Remember, we are in the age of everyone multi-tasking and wanting information
quickly. If your site is slow, does not work properly, or is hard to navigate,
potential customers will go elsewhere.
Your navigation bar, or menu bar, has to make sense. Don’t
use “Technical” to describe “Services” or “About Us” to put your “Contact Us”
information. (Make “About Us” and
“Contact Us” separate.)
Make sure that all of your links and videos work. If you
have broken links and videos, people will not want to visit your site. They may
also lose trust in your company.
Periodically go through your site and check your links, videos, and downloads to ensure they all work properly.
Most important, as you are building your site or going through your site, ask yourself "Can customers easily go from page to page?" and "Can they find the important information easily?"
6. A Strong “Call to
Action”
You may be wondering “what is ‘a call to action.’" Simply
put, a “call to action” is something that you want your customers to do. Do you
want them to join your email list? Call or email for a free quote? Visit your
blog? Add you on Facebook? Write a review on Google?
Whatever it is, you decide what the customer’s or potential
customer’s “next steps” should be. Then, you create your site, primarily your homepage,
around that.
Usually, people highlight their “call to action” at the very
top of the page like we do (above) or to the right of the page either beside or under the page's media (video, image slider, etc).
Some businesses find it very effective to use an on-screen
“pop-up” for their “call to action.” Many times companies will ask you to join email lists this way. The other options are just as effective
as the pop-up method but are less aggravating to customers.
If you would like the bar that we have on our site, you can go to https://www.hellobar.com/ once you have
secured your domain name. You have several "call to actions" options. If you want the button to link to a popup box once clicked for instant action completion for email sign-up, that is possible. However, it requires a few extra lines of code. So, if you are a little more tech savvy, you may want to look into it: http://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/filament/make-your-hello-bar-open-a-fancybox-modal.
If you prefer the side bar look, you would use a form
or social widget; or you could create your own if you are building your own website. Each website platform (Wordpress, Joomla, Xara, Drupal, etc) have their own widgets specific to that platform. With any platform, there are free and paid options.
7. Quality Content
Choose who your target market is. This is the time to be
picky, especially if you are new to the business. What are their demographics?
What city or cities do they live? Do they have kids or pets? What kind of jobs
do they have? Think of your ideal yet realistic customer. Then research city
data to see if it matches.
When planning this out, if you know you can do a great job
at cleaning carpets and upholstery after animals have made a mess on them but
are not great at cleaning red dye stains, you could focus your efforts on pet
lovers and not professionals who drink red wine or parents with little children.
Of course, your best bet is always to learn how to get over any hurdle you may
face in the cleaning industry. If you are unsure on what techniques or products to use, call us so we can walk you through the most popular and proven methods and tell you what products are used to complete those jobs.
8. Keywords
You should pick about 3-5 keywords. “But my competitors are
ranked for more than 3-5 words.” It’s easier to be great at a few things than
to be great at 100s or even 1000s of things. This is absolutely true with keywords. More
than likely your competitors are paying for advertising or have been in business for a long time. There are many aspects to being ranked high on
Google, such as social relevancy, quality content (keywords), and backlinks
but that would really be too much to cover. Not to mention, Google changes their
algorithms often which can make sharing important information difficult.
Everything in this post should not be affected by any Google algorithm changes,
since it has been true for at least a decade, if not longer.
Even if your website platform allows you to write keywords or you are able to write code for the keywords (building your own), search engines ultimately decide your keywords. Make sure that whatever keywords you chose are words that you have on your site. Keywords are based on content. If you are creating a new site or are willing to change your current site, make sure that your content (words, links, hover text, etc) matches the keywords you want.
An easy way to help strengthen your keywords’ credibility is
to actually have pages based on those keywords. For example, if you clean
carpets, rugs, and upholstery, you could have a navigational button that says
“services” and lists all of the services you provide with a brief description.
However, you can also have a drop-down menu under “Services” with additional
pages – Carpet Cleaning, Rug Cleaning, and Upholstery Cleaning. Here, you can
list a key word (the words just mentioned) as the titles and again in the first
paragraph. You can describe the processes you use, how long it takes, or any
additional information the customer may need to know. If you have any
certification for these areas, HERE is a great place to put them! You can also
add photos or videos to these pages.
With all of this information, you will be on your way to
creating a fantastic website that is sure to grow your business.
Let us know if you have used any of the above methods and
how they worked for you in the comments below!
Good Luck,
Cleaning Supply Network
