No matter how unique you think your business is, there will be numerous companies and organizations that offer the same goods or services that you do, and for a similar price, so your website is the prime way to make your business stand out from the crowd. Whether you are an established business or just starting out, your business’s website is the most influential tool to aid the success of your business. It’s how you generate leads and is often the first contact that potential customers have with your brand.
So, how are you going to compete for the lead position?
Here are 3 tips to gaining the competitive edge and making sure that your website is the one that people remember.
1. Understand how your website fits into your strategy
Your brand must give consumers a strong and consistent message. This is important to be able to develop a recognizable brand. Visual consistency includes the typography, the color scheme used and positioning of the logo. The content of your marketing materials must utilize the same brand voice to establish trust and to develop a loyal following from your customers.
The more consistent and coherent the characteristics of your brand are presented, the easier you are making your products or services and communications to be recognized by the audience. This also applies to the digital representation of your business: the website and social media profiles.
Too many businesses consider their website as a separate entity. However, for your website to perform to its peak, it must be considered within a wider marketing strategy: your digital marketing strategy is an important element that must work cohesively to support the wider framework. Creating a beautiful website alone will not generate leads; however, creating a dynamic addition to your marketing strategy will.
2. Create your website for the consumer
The most successful websites are designed for the consumer. Every decision that is made impacts the user experience. Think about why people use the internet. The main benefit to them is that they can quickly and conveniently access information about the products or services that you offer. Your website needs to provide visitors with an efficient experience. Most visitors to your website will make a quick decision about whether they like what they are looking at. Simplicity works best, so while you want to stand out from your competitors, unusual website features can harm the user experience.
- Easy to Use Navigation
With the foundations of a strong brand, your website should be consistent in design so that it is easy to navigate through to find the relevant information. Visitors to your site will immediately try to look for your site’s structure at the top horizontally or at the side of the page. Give visitors what they expect and use your design to control their journey.
- Content
The content of your website needs to add real value to the visitor. They are drawn to content that provides them with quality information that is relevant to them. This is your opportunity to sell your products and convert visitors into consumers.
The content should cater specifically for the target demographic in a way that will resonate with them; however, the content should also include keywords and phrases that will help the site be found through organic search. SEO is an important aspect of your digital strategy, and your content needs to be optimized to help your site’s visibility. Professional website content creators can be hired to provide you with SEO friendly content to boost your position in the SERPs.
- Clear Calls to Action
One of the main turn-offs for a visitor is to be met with a barrage of information. While you may have lots to say about the products or services that you offer, you risk damaging your conversion rate if you lose the calls to action in a mass of text. Keep your calls to action clear and succinct with only one per page. This way your message is not diluted.
- Speed
The speed at which your website loads is important. Nearly half of internet users expect a site to load within 2 seconds. Any longer and up to 40% of visitors will click away to a competitor. Optimize images and keep an eye on the server speed; making small adjustments to your site can impact the speed and affect your bounce rate.
3. Be Proactive with Metrics
It’s all very good and well having a marketing strategy and a website that is designed to enhance the user experience, but if you fail to identify metrics to measure the success of your efforts, you will not be able to recognize and monitor what is effective and what needs refining.
Metrics allow you to measure the true performance of your website, and alert you to actionable ways to keep visitors focused. Metrics can be used to:
- Identify traffic source
- New visitor conversion rates
- Return visitor conversion rates
- The number of interactions a visitor makes
- Where a visitor goes
Armed with this information, you will be able to make adjustments to your site and strategy to make each visit more profitable. The amount of data and analytics that is available can be overwhelming, so it’s important that you spend time researching which metrics are important and which ones can be considered vanity metrics.
Vanity metrics include data such as social media followers, page views or the number of subscribers that you have; however, they offer no real insight into your business. To make the most of the data that you have access to, choose metrics that will directly influence the achievement of defined business goals.
The internet is a wonderful way to market your business, but it is a highly competitive arena. Your business website should be considered as a dynamic tool within a wider framework that, with consistent branding, supports your business goals and objectives. Everything in your website needs to add to the user experience, and once you focus on the customers and provide them with a quality experience, you will find that the search engines reward you with increased visibility. Gaining the competitive edge is the aim, and by using metrics to finely tune performance, maintaining it really is possible.
By Steve Conway
Steve Conway is a content marketing professional and inbound marketing expert. Previously, Steve worked as a marketing manager for a tech software start-up. He is passionate about discovering new software that will that will advance his already well-honed digital marketing techniques.