The design of your website can have a huge impact on how many sales you make and how many clients you attract. If people find your design tacky and unprofessional, then they won’t want to do business with you. But, if you’re able to design your website well, then prospects will be more likely to buy from you.
In this guide, we’re going to look at five web design tips you can use for your service-based business that will help you attract more prospects so you can turn that website traffic into sales.
A call-to-action (CTA) is a prompt that tells visitors what to do when they get on your website. CTAs are a very important part of web design that affects buying behavior because they have the power to direct the traffic on your site and persuade them into taking actions that will boost conversions for your business.
To ensure that your calls-to-action really stand out, try to use command verbs in your CTA copy. Some examples are words like “get” “subscribe” or “buy”. You should also place your CTAs on bright buttons that contrast against the background of your website so they’re hard to miss.
To give you some inspiration, let’s take a look at a website that does a good job of creating strong calls-to-action.
Sayenko Design is a web design agency that also provides other services like website development and marketing.
Looking at their homepage, you’ll find a simple CTA in the middle of the page, right where visitors will be able to find it. The CTA copy tells people exactly what to do, which is to click it if they want to get an accurate service quote for their business. Also, the company has decided to use a bright and catchy orange color for their CTA button that stands out well from the blue background.
All of these tricks contribute to the creation of a very effective CTA that is hard to miss. If you also want to create CTAs that stand out on your website, try to implement the techniques that they’ve used. By using bold colors for your CTA and making your copy as specific as possible, you’ll be able to increase the chances of visitors taking your desired action.
It’s often quite difficult to convince people to take the first step with you or your business. This could involve them signing up to your mailing list, booking an appointment with you, or making their very first purchase.
But, once they take that step, they’ll be far more likely to spend money with you or keep making repeat purchases. So, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to get started. To do this, you could create an easy-to-use contact form or a simple sign-up method that allows people to register their contact details so you can follow up with more information about subsequent steps. You could also add a live chat option to your website, as this will allow people to get more information quickly from a company representative.
As an example, here’s a company that provides a clear way for people to take the next step on their website.
Highest Cash Offer is a real estate company that assists people in selling their houses. On their website, the first thing you’ll see is a contact form that asks people to enter their house address. The form also requests other relevant information, like the reason for selling their house, the property type, and contact details so they can get back to their leads.
It’s a pretty straightforward process from there and, because they’ve made it so easy for people to take the first step, prospective clients will be more at ease when going through the rest of the process. As a service-based business owner, this is definitely something you can do on your website. However, when designing your contact form, make sure you include all the relevant questions that you’ll need to ask your potential clients. This will help you get prepared and also allow you to create a custom quote or solution for clients prior to your consultation call with them.
Prospective customers will want to hear about how people like them have benefited from your services. While you can certainly tell them what you’re able to do for them, you should also aim to share the experiences and opinions of your previous or existing clients.
To do this, you should create space on your website for reviews, testimonials, and case studies. You could decide to create a section on your homepage or services page where you display written reviews from past clients, or the logos of the companies you’ve worked with. You can also dedicate an entire webpage to showing the testimonials and reviews you’ve received from customers.
As for case studies, you’ll want to write them in the form of a blog post so you can outline the challenges, solutions, and results of your clients. You can have your case studies in a separate blog category like customer success stories or something similar so people will be able to distinguish between your case studies and normal blog posts.
To get reviews from your clients, you’ll need to know how to properly approach them. And it doesn’t have to be so hard. One of the strategies you can use to ensure you get positive customer reviews is simply asking for feedback. When you’ve finished providing a service, you can just send over an email asking your client to leave a review on how they found your services and whether they’re likely to refer you to others.
You can also make things easier by creating survey forms that include comment boxes so your past customers can give specific scores and reviews of your service. You’ll then just need to decide how you’re going to display the testimonials you collect. For inspiration, let’s look at how Caffee Law has been able to display the reviews gotten from their previous customers on their website.
Caffee Law is a firm that’s made up of personal injury attorneys who specialize in areas like car accidents, motorcycle accidents, or pedestrian accidents.
To show the positive experiences that clients have had with their company, they’ve dedicated a section of their homepage to displaying these reviews. They use a carousel to show different 5-star reviews from their past clients, all thanking the company for their hard work and professional competence.
These reviews show how previous customers enjoyed the services of the company and they’re great for convincing future clients to contact the firm. This is a technique you could use on your website to prove that you’re great at what you do, and give your ideal customers another reason to get in touch.
When creating your website, it’s very important that you use high-quality images because they will establish trust in your brand, make you seem more professional, and can also help boost your sales.
To ensure that you’re using images that will actually get your customers excited, try to use photos that show people like them using your services. You could also create images or illustrations that demonstrate the best features of your services, or use images that humanize your business so people feel a connection with it.
To get some inspiration on how to use imagery well on your site, let’s take a look at the following example.
Arcurve is a full-service company that focuses on providing support within the technology, advisory, and software development industry. On their about page, you’ll find an image of their team huddled together in a group picture. Everyone in the photo is either smiling or laughing, and this makes it easier for prospective clients to feel a human connection with the brand.
And that’s not all. Below the image is a very fun video that shows how connected the employees are to each other. Any prospective client watching the video would most likely get a good feeling from doing so and it just gives off the impression that their brand is friendly and the people in the company would be easy to talk to.
To do the same for your brand, try to ensure your about page reflects the true nature of your employees. You could ask them to send you a picture of them doing their favorite activity and then use that instead of a stiff professional picture. However, your approach should vary depending on your type of business. If you’re in a rather serious profession and you feel that would be too casual, you can simply just use pictures where your team are smiling and happy to make prospective clients feel welcome and at ease.
A lot of people won’t spend much time on your website, so it’s important you keep all of the most vital information above the fold. And, by that, I mean you should place the most important information at the uppermost part of your web page where visitors can see it without scrolling down.
And you need to be careful with the kind of information that you place there. Ideally, you should be highlighting your unique selling points (USPs), the benefits of your services, and how people can learn more about what your business does.
To give you more insight, here’s the website of a company that does a great job of placing the most important information above the fold.
Your above-the-fold content doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective. Animalz is a content marketing service and, on their homepage, they show you the benefits of working with them — that you get high-quality content marketing. Even before scrolling down, they already highlight the types of companies that they cater to, so the copy also does a great job of weeding out unqualified leads.
If you want to do the same for your brand, you just need to highlight one or two benefits that make your company stand out over its competitors. You don’t need to list all the services you offer above the fold — there’s still time for prospects to find that out later. Simply highlight one or two selling points to get people hooked so they can keep scrolling.
Your website will often be a client’s first introduction to your business. This means you’ll want to give off a good first impression. You can do this by implementing any of the tips I’ve given in this guide.
You can start by using bold calls-to-action, making it easy for prospects to take the next step, and making sure you create space to display your positive reviews and testimonials. And, if you want more business tips that can help you grow your website and business, you can follow Soup.io’s blog for the latest updates.
