No one wants a website that doesn’t turn visitors into buyers. That’s a waste of money right? So as promised in the last post, we are starting our series on website tips so that you can gain a better understanding of how to use your website most effectively to bring in customers and sales to your business. Today we’re going to be covering the question of who exactly you will be sending to your website so that you can communicate the appropriate things, and then how to use your home page to speak to the people who matter most.
Who Is Your Website For?
Here are a few types of people that a small business may want to visit their website:
- Potential Customers
- Current Customers
- Vendors and Partners
(If you are not putting together a small business website, you ought to think through who it is that you want to come to your site and try to categorize them similarly.)
So if these are the three categories that represent most of the people that a business wants to come to its site, it only makes sense to order the website to speak to each of these groups. Depending on the type of business though, any one of these categories might be more important than another. Simply ask yourself which category of website visitor is 1) most valuable to the business and 2) which visitor is most likely to come to the website.
For example, a roofing contractor may get a lot of business from a few key partners in the area but realize that most of the people that are going to be looking them up on the internet are actually potential customers. This would mean that the website of this roofing contractor should cater mostly to potential customers, but should still have a very obvious part of their home page that communicates to those very valuable partners as well. On the other hand, if the roofing contractor determines that they simply do not get much business from individuals but only from partners with vendors, it would probably make sense to set up the site to speak directly to existing or potential partners and not bother to try to communicate with anyone else.
It is important to go through this thinking process before you get a website. It’s usually easier to set things up correctly the first time than to rebuild or re-arrange your website later without significant costs.
So who are the people that you want your website to communicate with most? Once you have an answer, the next step is putting it to work on your home page.
Speak to Your Most Important Visitors on Your Home Page
Your home page is the front page of your website and is therefore the one page of your website that most people will see. Because of this, you want to make sure that you are using your home page to communicate with the group that you determined was most important to you. Let’s keep the three categories of visitors from above and assume that you want to communicate with potential customers, current customers, and some partners you have in the community. Let’s say that you have also determined that potential customers are the most important group you need to speak to.
Generally speaking, you want to make sure that you have something on your home page that speaks to every group that would be coming, however, you definitely want to make sure that the most obvious, eye-catching parts of your website are communicating with your primary target. This means that you should use splashes of color and images to draw the attention of the visitors you are most trying to communicate with. Using our example, you would want to make sure that the most obvious message on your home page communicates with potential customers, but that you have something on your home page for your current customers as well, and maybe you can put a link in the footer or on your menu for vendors and partners.
This seems like an incredibly simple process to think through, and it is. Unfortunately though, many people don’t take the time to think through who is going to be coming to their site so that they can craft their home page and the messages on their home page to that group of people.
