Is Your Company’s Website Losing You Business?

Where’s the first place people go to learn about your business? You didn’t even have to think about it, did you? It’s your website. 

And Hinge’s extensive research into buyers of professional services supports your intuition—nearly every buyer will check out your website before signing on the dotted line.  

But what if I were to ask you what makes a professional services website effective? What features and characteristics translate into bottom-line results? Is your website giving you an advantage? Or is it hurting you? 

Chances are, you find these questions a bit tougher to answer.

In today’s newsletter, I’m going to explore these questions and try to provide some answers. 

You Aren’t Alone. And that’s a Good Thing.

In my experience working with hundreds of professional services firms, most organizations’ websites fall short in at least some way, and usually in quite a few. Their sites are impossible to edit and use older, more vulnerable platforms . They are too abstract. They look or sound like their competitors. They don’t generate many leads. They don’t integrate with their other marketing technologies.

Now, if most of your competitors are right there with you in the same leaky canoe (this is probably the case), you have an opportunity. If you were to address your website’s shortcomings, you could build a meaningful advantage. Maybe even a lasting one.

How? Let’s explore what an ideal, high-performing website looks like. 

What Are You Selling?

A good way to think about your website is to consider what you are selling. Unless your primary objective is to sell a product, such as a SaaS platform or piece of software, you are in the business of selling your expertise. (Even if you do sell a product, clients rely on your expertise for implementation, training and support.) 

And when you think about expertise, it boils down to one thing: trust. People will only pay attention to experts if they believe in the things they think, say and do. 

That means your website needs to create interest in your expertise and establish trust. 

How Your Website Can Establish Trust

There is a surefire, proven way to build a following of loyal, trusting fans on your website. It’s also a powerful way to expand your reach to people and markets that have never heard of you. What is this magical thing?

Actually, it’s a collection of tools. And the most important one is your blog. A blog is a fantastic place to feature your expertise. Many firms use their blog to spotlight their people and clients and holiday parties. They are missing the point. 

Instead, your blog should be the most common entry point to your website. That’s right. Not your homepage—your blog. Here’s how it works. 

When you write frequently about issues your target audience cares about—problems that your firm can solve—many people who might need your services will find your expert blog posts through Google and other search engines. If they like what they read, they are likely to return again and again for more insights. 

Eventually, some of these avid readers will put you at the top of their list when they are ready to buy. And some won’t even bid it out because your firm is the obvious choice. Yeah. Whoa.

For your blog posts to be found in search, however, requires the next tool: search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is a whole discipline unto itself, but it can be boiled down to two activities: on-page optimization and off-page optimization. 

On-page optimization is the process of preparing what you write to be found and understood by Google and its search brethren. The most important way this happens is by writing your content with relevant keyword phrases in mind. 

Off-page optimization is the process of raising the perceived authority of your content. The most common way to do this is to write guest blog posts that include links back to the content on your blog. Each “backlink” is a kind of vote for your content, which Google silently tallies up and uses in part to rank its search results. 

There are many other ways to accomplish this goal, including public relations, social media promotions, and link-building campaigns. Over time, you also will accumulate backlinks naturally, as writers who admire your work link to your posts.

A third tool is valuable gated content. This is the sexy, seductive stuff—usually longer and more in-depth than your blog posts—that you put behind a short registration form. Valuable content can include executive guides, white papers, research reports, checklists, mini video courses and webinar recordings—to name just a few options. 

The idea is that web visitors are willing to trade their email address for a high-value piece of content. At this point, you’ve accomplished two goals: you’ve deepened visitors’ engagement and added them to your list. Now you can continue the seduction with a smart and alluring email marketing campaign.

The fourth tool is an offer strategy. To convert web visitors into prospects and leads, you need a well-conceived plan to promote the valuable content that is most relevant to a visitor on any given page of your website. You not only need to consider the relevance of the topic, but also factors such as the reader’s likely buying stage, level of technical knowledge and role in their organization. For instance, a CEO is more likely to download a piece that is more strategic and less technical than a CIO. Then you need to write and produce each of the promotional ads.

There are other tools you can use to build trust that I don’t have space to get into here, such as video and webinars. While those can be important ways to engage visitors, they aren’t as great at attracting new audiences, even in this time of radical changes to Google’s search algorithm. So build a robust blog first. 

At this point, we’ve talked about building trust by writing educational content that your audience wants to read. But what about potential buyers who are checking you out? What can you do to influence them?

How Your Website Can Build Credibility

It may sound trite, but first impressions matter. How visitors experience your website can shape the way they perceive your business. Fortunately, there are things you can do about it.

Every firm wants to be recognized as sophisticated and highly credible. After all, those are signs of true expertise. But sophistication and credibility are subjective. That means that even the way your brand is presented visually can have a profound effect on how it is received. Your website design—the colors, images, graphic elements, animations, layout decisions and attention to detail that produce its overall effect—sends powerful signals about the quality, personality and expertise of your firm. Don’t underestimate this intangible persuader.

Here’s another way you can influence your visitors: don’t frustrate them. I’m talking about your website’s navigation. Keep it simple—even minimal. Don’t make people guess where to find the information they are looking for. Don’t bury it four clicks deep. Don’t use clever, unintuitive words to label your navigation elements. And don’t ever make people wonder where your navigation is.

Finally, you can make writing a differentiator. Most website writing is uninspiring, and sometimes even difficult to understand. Make simplicity and clarity your guiding principles. Use the active voice. Write mostly in short sentences. Write interesting headlines. Keep paragraphs short. Use lots of subheads to make the text skimmable. Never make pages longer than they absolutely need to be. And most importantly, say something different than your competitors. 

Your prospective clients have trouble distinguishing between firms like yours. And they are looking for a reason to buy from you. Your website is a golden opportunity to set yourself apart and position yourself as a firm loaded with credibility, interesting ideas and relevant expertise. Now make the most of it.

Happy marketing!

Liz