Web Matters: When evaluating the state of your website, keep these things in mind

The days when starting a company name with the letter ‘A’ increased its chances of being discovered in the Yellow Pages by a potential customer are behind us. With the introduction of the internet, being found now hinges on select keywords and a website.

More than 52 percent of small businesses lack a website while many have websites but need an upgrade, putting them at a disadvantage. Customers now go online first to find products and services, which means your company’s lack of an online presence may be sending customers to the competition.

Creating a Website that Works

Creating a functional and appealing website that accurately represents your brand doesn’t need to be difficult. The purpose of a small business’s website should be to drive business and convince consumers that your company is best suited to fulfill their needs. The simplest place to start is with a company business card, which usually includes the most basic information a website needs: contact information, business hours, a logo and identifiable colors.

Determining the purpose and basic layout of the website makes it easier to choose between the multitude of platform, host and server options. The platform is the technology that puts your information onto the world wide web. “You’re going to want to get a website platform that is stable and fast, but most important, something that you can update,” said George Rears, PMP, a director of technology services in the professional services field. These platforms can be acquired through a variety of service providers: Wix, GoDaddy, SquareSpace, WordPress, etc. The host is where the website physically resides, while the server is the software that runs on the host to provide the actual website. Not only can a server display web pages, but it can also manage databases and stored data, which is ideal for websites where items can be purchased and paid for by consumers, called e-commerce sites.

No matter what platform you choose, consider whether the site works on mobile devices. The concept of going mobile has proven to be a challenging one for small businesses. Ninety-four percent of small businesses don’t have mobile-friendly websites, but the majority of searches are done on mobile devices, causing these businesses to lose valuable traffic.

Some platform services include mobile optimization in their plan, while others may require you to create mobile sites separately, stretching the budget. Before deciding if a platform switch is necessary, check your site’s analytics to determine if being on mobile is necessary; Google Analytics is free and easy to use. Keep your target customer group in mind, as residential customers are more likely to use mobile than commercial customers who spend more time in front of desktop computers. If approximately 25 percent of site visitors are using mobile, the potential loss of business for your company may become significant.

Not every platform and host-server package are created equal, and it’s important to be mindful of your level of expertise and budget restrictions. A potential solution to your website management needs may be hiring a specialist if the process of creating or updating a website yourself is overwhelming. “At the end of the day, your business is not about running a website. You need to be able to do your day job,” said Rears.

The Content Factor

While larger budgets might allow you to include videos or enable customers to make appointments online, companies with smaller budgets can still create and maintain equally effective websites by making the most of content.

Website content is the most important factor in being discovered by and developing an early relationship with potential customers. The role of content is to educate the consumer and establish credibility, something that is key in any service industry — including air duct cleaning — where customers may engage services only once every few years. “Consider the people who are visiting your site — what are the key objects they are coming to the site for?” said Craig Broadbent, a director of web solutions and web design expert. “Once you know why visitors are coming to your site, create paths through the site content to address their needs. Set up navigation with no more than six items and keep any sub-navigation under that to a handful.”

Being a NADCA member already establishes credibility and the addition of relevant certifications and accreditations on the homepage is a big draw for potential customers. Build on that by including different pages to showcase what your company has to offer. Apart from the About and a detailed Services Provided page, other sources of information may be a photo portfolio of past projects, customer testimonials or a blog sharing articles and industry-related information to further associate your company with credible sources.

After customers have read through all the content, they need a final push — the call to action that gets your customers to do what you want them to do: hire you! A call to action can be any action, from directing customers to schedule an appointment to requesting a quote or asking for more information.

E-commerce is an innovative way to get the most out of a call to action — you’re engaging the site visitor in an actual sale on the website. But for service providers, most transactions take place on the job site, making e-commerce less of a necessity. Therefore, NADCA members should consider enabling an appointment setting feature on their sites or online chat feature, which makes the company more accessible for customers.

A Safe Zone

After putting so much hard work into creating the best website for your company, keeping it secure is the next order of business. Your first line of defense: the password for site admin access. Pick something that won’t be easy to guess and change it often. Also, check your website daily to ensure you’re aware if something goes wrong. Unless you’re using e-commerce to conduct transactions on your site, a hacker breaking into the site and damaging it may be the worst thing that can happen — an easy fix. If you are completing transactions on your site, use a trusted partner like PayPal to processes the information.

Tracking Traffic

Google Analytics is one of the most relied-upon services for overall website analytics. It can determine where your visitors are coming from, how long they stay on your site and what pages they visited. These analytics can help highlight problem areas on a website and guide what needs to change, whether the navigation is confusing or the call to action is ineffective.

If most of a site’s visitors come from search engines, utilizing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should be the next step in perfecting your website. SEO is the practice of creating and editing your site’s content to align with specific search terms people use when looking for something online. For example, a customer may do an online search for “air duct cleaning,” and you’d want to make sure that the content on your site includes that phrase somewhere for Google to match your site with that search. However, general search terms can make it difficult to get noticed, so specificity is key. Attach the name of your region to that search term (i.e., “Detroit air duct cleaning”) and you could show up in the search results of potential customers. Just make sure that phrase appears somewhere on your website, too.

While appearing in a top spot in Google search results is ideal, there are many factors that play into that outcome. Focus on incorporating keywords in content, clean URLs that reflect your brand and consider the benefits of social media in expanding your reach.

Learn the Lingo

E-commerce: The ability to complete financial transactions on a website
Google Analytics: A free tool to analyze where visitors come from on your site and what they do while they’re there
Host: Where the website physically resides
Keywords: The words users type into the search bar on a search engine
Mobile optimization: When a website is made for being viewed on a smartphone or tablet
Platform: The technology that puts your information on the internet
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The practice of creating and editing your site’s content to align with specific search terms people use when looking for something online
Server: The software that will run on the host to provide the actual website