5 Website Strategy Secrets

When you decide to take your business online, creating a website is usually the first step. A website acts as a 24/7 online representation of your brand and allows people to interact, engage and become familiar with you, your products and your services.

Your site is often the first impression potential clients have of you and it is the perfect place for your target audience or potential clients to get to know, like and trust you – even when you are not around. Thus you want it to portray the right message.

In order to get the right message out, it is important to understand and know the “why”, “what” and “who” behind your site: Why are you creating a website? What do you hope to accomplish with it? Who will you be writing for?

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To help you, here are 5 Website Strategy Secrets to think about when you plan and set-up your website for attracting more clients.

1. Know your clients and who you write for.

Let’s think about it. With over 2 billion people on the internet, what will make your site stand out and grab the attention of your visitors so they want to know more? A beautiful design might do it at first, but it is really the content on your site that will entice your visitors to take action. An important thing to remember is that your website isn’t about you and what you do, it’s about the problems you solve for people and the difference you can make in their lives. So the better you know your clients, the more specific you can get and the more your audience will feel like you understand their problems and you’re speaking directly to them. When this happens, they’ll recognize you as someone who can help them and will happily spend time on your site and start to connect and interact with you.

2. Know what you want to accomplish online

For me, the #1 goal of your website is for your visitors to take some action – and the #1 action you want them to take is to give you their contact details. So, make sure you have a way to capture their information (e.g. via an email list service like Aweber or similar) for you to continue building a relationship with them.

Apart from capturing contact details, it is also important to strategically lead your visitors through your site. Think about the process and flow of your website. e.g. What do I want my ideal client to see first and foremost before anything else? Once they see that, what do I want them to do next? Once they do that, what do I want them to do next? And then?

3. Display positive results from people who have worked with you.

Testimonials can become one of your best marketing materials because it provides social proof of how good you are. It is not only you telling prospects about what you can do, but through testimonials, your previous clients emphasize it…. and to tell you the truth, your previous clients can sell you better than you can. Success stories from your clients create trust and prove that what you say is actually true. So get testimonials and prominently display them on your site so prospects can see how you have helped other people that were in a situation similar to theirs. You can have a dedicated page for testimonials, and also use them strategically throughout your site

4. Be You

One of the best ways to differentiate yourself from anyone else out there, is to let your personality show through your website. Just be you. Also show visitors who want to get to know you better, how they can connect with you in other ways as well. If you are connected on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Youtube etc. invite visitors to join you on those platforms so they can engage with you in other ways and build an even a stronger relationship through connecting with you.

5. Have control over your own site

Your website should not keep you in chains. There are many instances – even daily that you want to update or change content on your site and you do not want to ask a web designer to do it for you all the time. When you have full control over your site, you have the freedom and flexibility to do what you need to do online anytime and anywhere.

Very important. In cases were you want to use a web designer, don’t let them build your site on some proprietary content management system (CMS) that only they know how to use. I recommend getting a designer that can use WordPress as platform. It’s popular, easy to learn and use and in the end you can have full control over all your website needs – even when your designer is out of reach for a 2 month vacation in Hawaii.

Okay, it’s reflection time… Which one of these website strategy secrets can you improve on? Let’s hear about it in the comments below…:)