Whether you design websites on WordPress or Squarespace, there are two key principles that a website should follow. Small businesses, bloggers, freelancers, and entrepreneurs – their websites should all have these two major things in common in order for it to help them reach their business goals.
Things your website must do to land clients
Your website has the ability to land your clients, make you money, grow your email list (basically achieve any goal you’re trying to achieve in your business)… but ONLY if you use it right, ONLY if you design each page strategically.
Lost as to what strategic design is?
Luckily you landed on this blog post! By the end of this post, you’ll know the 2 things every single page on your website must do in order to help you achieve the goals you’re aiming for.
So let’s get started!
thing 1: the pages on your website must Provide the Information Someone Expects to See
This sounds simple, right? Why wouldn’t you provide the information someone expects to see on your website? I agree. Unfortunately, so many people think that is what they’re doing but they’re actually confusing people. Are you one of those people?
When someone lands on your website they have certain expectations around what information they will see. They expect to learn more about your company, they expect to see what products or services you sell, they expect to see what type of people you work with, they expect to see the results your products or services can achieve, and they expect to have a way to hand their money over to you.
Website visitors have spent SO MUCH TIME on the internet. They’ve been to and navigated through more websites than you or I could count. And because of this, your website visitors have these expectations for your website as a whole.
You can’t only think of your website as a whole though. You also have to think of a website as a bunch of individual pages that provide this information in a way that makes sense. In a way that your website visitors are already expecting.
What Do People Expect?
When someone lands on your homepage they’re expecting to see the product or service you are pushing at the moment. This could be your best-selling product or service, a service that has open availability, or a brand-spankin’ new product or service you want to introduce to people. However, what this is really showing people is what you are all about. What you are pushing should very obviously explain what you do, who you do it for, and how you do it.
What Are People Not Expecting?
When someone lands on your homepage they ARE NOT expecting to see your contact form front and center. This is something people expect… you guessed it… the contact page. After being conditioned to expect specific things from a companies homepage, website visitors will become confused if they land on your website and immediately see a contact form. A contact form won’t explain what you do, who you do it for, and how you do it.
If someone does land on your homepage and they’re presented with information that they didn’t expect or that doesn’t answer the questions they are looking for on that specific page, they won’t spend much time looking for the answers.
You have a really, really, really short snippet of time to make a good impression on new people. And you could lose them in a matter of seconds if your website confuses them and doesn’t answer the questions they are looking to have answered.
Put Into Action
I’ve created this awesome guide that explains exactly what people are looking for on every single page of your website – from your homepage to your about page, to your contact page. Enter your email below to download the guide and learn how you can make adjustments to your website to make positive first impressions (and to not make people jump ship out of confusion).
thing 2: Guide your website visitors somewhere
It’s not enough to just provide the information someone is expecting to see on your website. You have to actually guide people to take a specific action after they have gathered the information they are looking for.
We’re generally lazy as people. I don’t say this in a bad way, I say it because it’s true.
In Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller he speaks a lot about how we don’t take action unless something prompts us to take action. Even if we know something will make our lives better or fix a problem we’re having, unless something prompts us to take action, we’ll most likely bypass the solution altogether. That “something” that prompts us to take action could be a person or an event.
On your website, YOU are that “something” that prompts your website visitors to take action.
You prompt people to take action by using a CTA (call-to-action) that is ridiculously clear as to what you want them to do next. The CTA could prompt people to sign on for your service, book a strategy call, join your email list, or learn more about a service.
Never ever leave these call-to-actions off your website! There shouldn’t be a single page on your website that doesn’t have a call-to-action on it. If there is and you do have a page that doesn’t have a clear CTA (a clear next step), you’re basically telling people it’s okay to not sign on with you.
put into action
So where should you include call-to-actions throughout your website? What should the CTA even be? What if it’s a page that doesn’t necessarily have an obvious next step? Like your about page…
Remember that guide I mentioned above? If you already downloaded it, great! Just keep reading through it to the end to see what call-to-actions you can include on every single page of your website to ensure people take action. Plus, you’ll learn where on each page to include each CTA!
If you haven’t downloaded the guide yet, drop your email below!
recap of the 2 things every page on your website must do
- Provide the information someone expects to see
- Guide your website visitors to take action
It’s as easy as that! As obvious as it may seem, we’re so involved in our businesses that sometimes we forget what information people actually need to see (because the answers seem so obvious to us!).
Here’s one last chance to grab that guide!
