Most visitors spend less than a minute on your website. In that time they need to understand who you are, decide whether they trust you and find out how to reach you. If any of that fails, they leave for a competitor, and usually you never find out they were there.
The good news is that this doesn't take an expensive or complicated website. It takes five basic things. Open your site in another tab and go through them one by one.
A clear message at first glance
When someone lands on your site, they should know three things within five seconds: what you do, who you do it for and why they should choose you.
"Welcome to our website" tells them nothing. "We install PVC windows and doors in Zagreb and the surrounding area, with fitting within 14 days" tells them everything.
Check: Show your homepage to someone who doesn't know you, for five seconds. If they can't say what you do, your message needs simplifying.
Contact details you don't have to search for
It sounds obvious, but this is where most websites go wrong. The phone number is buried in the footer, the form has ten fields and the email address is an image you can't copy.
Don't make it hard for a customer who's ready to talk:
- a phone number people can tap to call straight from their mobile
- WhatsApp or Viber, if you use them
- a short form with three or four fields
- your address and opening hours, if customers visit you in person
Check: How many clicks does it take to get from your homepage to a phone call? Ideally zero, meaning the number is visible straight away.
Fast loading and a good mobile experience
More than half of all visitors come from a phone. If your site takes longer than three seconds to load, or people have to zoom in to read it on a small screen, many of them give up before reading anything.
A slow site loses customers, and it also does worse on Google, because Google takes speed and mobile-friendliness into account when ranking pages.
Check: Open your site on your phone using mobile data, not Wi-Fi. If the wait annoys you, it annoys your customers too. For a more precise result, enter your address into Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool.
Reasons to trust you
People don't buy from businesses they don't know. They buy from businesses they trust. Your site needs to show that there's a real company with real customers behind it:
- examples of your work or projects, with real photos instead of stock images
- reviews and testimonials from happy customers, with names where possible
- company details: full legal name, address and registration or tax number. These build trust, and for most businesses selling online they're also a legal requirement
- a photo of you or your team, because a face behind the business makes a big difference
Check: If you were a customer seeing this business for the first time, would the website convince you to trust them with your money?
A clear next step
The visitor has read your page and liked it. Now what? Every page should end with a clear call to action: "Request a quote", "Call us", "Book an appointment".
One clear button works better than five vague ones. Don't leave customers to work out the next step themselves, because then they usually do nothing.
Check: Look at each of your key pages. Does each one end with a button or prompt that tells the customer what to do next?
Quick recap
Ticked all five? Great, your website is doing its job. If not, don't worry. Most of these can be fixed quickly, without building a whole new site.
Not sure how your website measures up? Get in touch and I'll take a look for free. I'll tell you plainly what's working, what isn't and what's worth fixing.