Sandy Waggett breaks down five website elements that beat competitors: calls to action placed above the fold and repeated throughout, a clear problem-solution-outcome message, a three-step roadmap for working together, a lead magnet to capture emails, and Google Analytics on every page to track what works.
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Hello, everyone. Sandy Waggett with MSW Interactive Designs. And today I'm here to talk with you about the five must have elements when you're considering redesigning your website or building a new website for that matter. So if you were to implement these five things, your website would be better than 99% of the websites out there. Trust me on that one. All right, so the first one is you want to make sure that you have very prominent calls to action all over the website. You want to start with a very prominent call to action in the upper right hand corner of your website because the I makes a Z from left to right when it scans a site initially. And then you want to make sure that you have another call to action in the space above the fold. And that is where your primary message goes. And then a strong call to action that will drive someone to do whatever it is you want them to do when you bought that ad to get them to your website in the first place. And then throughout the website, you can, you can't overdo the calls to action. If you're wanting them to contact you, get a free quote. Whatever it is, you should have the opportunity to do so at every turn on your website. So the call to action, very important. The second one is you need to have a very clear message. Most people just start with things like welcome to my website. It's a big waste of space to do that. What you instead should do is start thinking about the problem you solve in terms of the customer, how you solve it, and then what life looks like for the customer when you're done. So at MSW Interactive Designs, our language above the fold might be something like this. We help businesses grow with highly effective websites and robust social media campaigns. And as a result, our customers tend to rank well in Google and dominate their competition. That's the kind of message I'm talking about. That's phrased in terms of what you do for the customer, the problem you solve, how you solve it, and what life looks like. Much more powerful than saying something like, welcome to MSW Interactive Designs, we're happy you're here, blah, blah, blah. The second or, I'm sorry, the third piece is how to work with you. This is another piece that most businesses will leave off their website and it's super important because people want a roadmap. You want to guide them into what the experience looks like. And this comes from Donald Miller's Building a Story Brand framework. And it is super impactful and it is a foundation of his framework. I love it. So as an example with MSW interactive design, step one, I want you to as step one I want you to fill out our quote request form. Step two, a customer service expert or a web expert is going to contact you and talk with you about your project. Outline the details and we'll get started. And then step three is you are going to have the website of your dreams that outperforms anything you ever had in your life for your business. So step one, fill out the contact form. Step two, one of our experts will call you. Step three, you're going to have a great website that converts business. Very simple three steps. Sounds like a given, sounds like a no brainer. But most people leave this kind of stuff off of their website and it reduces the conversions through the site. So think about what those steps look like for your business and make sure you add them in. Step four or item number four is a lead magnet. You want to make sure that you have a lead magnet on your website because people will not always take action to work with you on their first visit. In fact, most people won't. What a lead magnet does is it offers them something of value that solves a problem that you know they have and then they give you an email address in exchange for that information. What makes that so valuable is then you're building a prospect list that you can nurture into customers over time so that first visit to your website doesn't become an anonymous visit. Instead, you've captured information and you have the ability now to build that relationship, earn their trust and then close the business over a series of contact in the future. And then the fifth one is analytics. You want to make sure that you have Google Analytics installed on every page of your website. This will provide valuable information over time about how people got there, what they were searching for, what they did when they arrived, where they left, how they interacted with things on the website. Very important data when you're looking to make improvements. I can't tell you the number of people that will call me for a website redesign and I'll ask, you know, well what's not working about your current website and they can't answer that question other than the fact that it's not getting them business. Well, we can go back to the messaging and the calls to action, but there's also great insights in Google Analytics that will help us determine what people are doing on the current website so that we can make very informed improvements instead of just guessing. So those are the five things. I have this available for download on my website. Mswinteractivedesigns.com you can download it and use it as your guide as you start your new web design project or revamping your existing website. Sandy Weigt with MSW Interactive Designs Hope you have a great day.
