29: 5 Things Your Website Needs
Welcome back to Making Good, the podcast for small businesses who want to make a big impact.
I’m your host, Lauren Tilden, and this is episode 29.
This episode airs on Tuesday, November 10th… exactly 1 week after the 2020 US election. If you’re anything like me…. You may have spent the last 7 days glued to CNN, unable to get much of anything done except breathe and hope hope hope.
In the past, I would probably have beat myself up about wasting my time and not getting stuff done. But I think I am finally realizing the stress that the state of the world and country can create for us, I am (trying to) give myself permission to get behind sometimes. And so here we are!
Today’s episode is about X things your website needs. Many of us know we need a website, and so we just put something together as quickly as possible and move on.
But your website is important and full of opportunities for your business. This episode is about making sure you take advantage of them.
This one is short & sweet, and can serve as a kind of checklist for you, so you can immediately go start making the tweaks needed.
Let’s get into it!
1: Immediate Clarity
15 seconds is the average amount of time spent on a website. That’s… not a lot of time.
If you only have 15 seconds, you need to clearly and immediately convey what you have to offer.
If you have a shop with a physical location, you know that -- fortunately or unfortunately -- people judge a book by its cover. Meaning… the way your store looks from the outside matters, whether people realize it consciously or not. The more obvious it is from the outside that you have something valuable to offer -- the more likely people will be to come in.
At Station 7, I see people walk by on the street and crane their heads to look at the shop, trying to decide if they want to come in.
Think of your website as your Digital Storefront. When people stumble upon it, it’s like they’re walking by, craning their heads to look inside your shop and see if it’s worth having a browse.
Your job is to show them that you have something valuable to offer -- that there’s a reason they should slow down and spend some time with you.
And because studies show you only have 15 seconds to capture someone’s attention (or they’ll most likely leave), you need to communicate what you have to offer RIGHT AWAY so they can decide if it’s for them, and not leave before they give you a chance.
So how do we do this?
The most important thing to think about here is your homepage. The first page that people get to when they land on your website. When they first land on your webpage, without much scrolling, they should be able to figure out what you have to offer.
I would really suggest that you be as direct as possible.
Ask yourself this question:
What do you sell?
How can you make it immediately obvious what I sell? You can show it with a visual and you can explain it with words.
In your visual, make sure that your product or service is obvious. For example, if your photo is a flat lay with a bunch of products in it, it should be obvious without explanation which of those are your product. The simpler, the better.
And in your text, this is not a place to get fancy. If you have a tagline that concretely describes your product, feel free to use it, but don’t be afraid to spell it out plainly. Clarity is super important here.
For my Good Sheila paper goods, here’s how I do it:
My visual is a photo of a bunch of different greeting cards.
The first text you read (aside from my logo) is: PAPER GOODS AND GIFTS INSPIRED BY NATURE
Here’s another example.
If you’re a jewelry company, here might be your answers.
What do you sell? Jewelry
How can I make it immediately obvious what you sell?
Visual: Pick a great image (or a carousel of images) of your product. K
Words: Say something like: “Colorful, handmade clay jewelry” instead of “Wearable art that expresses your unique personality”. The first is clear. The second, while clever, is not.
If you sell a service and not a physical product, the visual component of this will be a little more difficult, but still doable.
Think about either a visual of you doing the work, or the outcome you create. If you are a makeup artist, you could have an image of you in action putting makeup on someone… or you could have a photo of a bride on her wedding day with beautiful makeup.
If you’re a graphic designer, you could have a mood board of different concepts like you might create for a client, or you could have something from your portfolio that shows what you can do.
If you REALLY don’t want to use a direct visual, you need to make sure that it’s super obvious IMMEDIATELY, without scrolling, what you offer. For example, for Making Good, this podcast -- I didn’t have an image of me podcasting or my podcast gear, and I didn’t want to use a generic stock image. So, I decided to focus on making it clear through my text. My web address is makinggoodpodcast.com which explains that this is a podcast, and then in the first bit of text on my website it explains exactly what this podcast is about.
Overall, you want to put yourself in your audience’s shoes and try to look at your website from an outside perspective. Is it immediately obvious what you have to offer? Remember, we’re not trying to convince anyone to buy something they don’t need -- we are just making it as clear as possible for them to understand what we have so they can make that decision for ourselves. And ifthey leave the website without even having a chance to see what we sell… well, that’s everyone’s loss.
So, we talked about having a great visual and clear wording right up front.
But for extra credit, let’s just talk about one more thing.
As a baseline, your website needs to be aesthetically pleasing. Most of us don’t have a designer helping us create our websites, so the best rule of thumb I can offer you is to keep it as simple as possible.
Some ways to do this:
If you don’t have a website (or are just starting), I’d recommend starting with Squarespace. They have tons of (free or cheap) templates that have great design to get you started.
Don’t use more than one or two fonts
White space is your friend. Don’t feel like you have to pack things in
Try to keep to a color palette of a few colors
Anytime you’re writing something more than a sentence or two, it should be dark text on a white or very light background
2. Make it easy to buy from you
This is pretty self-explanatory and probably sounds very obvious, but you’d be surprised how often I find this to be an issue.
For Station 7, the retail shop, I buy from small businesses all the time. So I’m often looking at their websites, trying to figure out if they sell wholesale. SO OFTEN, I spend way too long on their website trying to figure this out, and ultimately have to send them an email to ask if they wholesale their products.
But even if you don’t wholesale, and you sell a service or product, it needs to be extremely obvious for your customer to know how to purchase what you sell.
With product-based businesses, this usually takes the form of an online ecommerce shop or something like Etsy. These tools have made it pretty easy for us, but the only extra comment I have here is to err on the side of making it easier. Don’t ask for information you don’t need to collect… every extra thing you ask your customer to do increases the likelihood that they’ll just stop trying.
For service-based businesses where often it’s not as simple as adding a product to your cart and then paying immediately, what you need to do is be extremely clear on what your audience’s next step is, and make that clear to them.
If you’re an aesthetician, maybe the next step is to book an appointment. That should be extremely prominent on your website in multiple locations. I would even spell it out:
“Ready for your refreshing, plant-based facial? Your next step is to book your appointment here.”
If you’re a copywriter, maybe the next step is to set up a 20-minute free phone call to talk about working together. You could write something like:
“Interested in having me write your next month of Instagram posts? Book a (free!) chat with me to see if we’d be a good fit!”
3: A (compelling) way to collect email addresses
If you’ve listened to this podcast more than a couple of times you’ve probably heard me professing my love for email marketing.
But I’ll do it again here:
Email is the most powerful tool you have in your marketing toolbox.
You OWN your email list. Facebook and Instagram and other social media platforms can do whatever they want to their platforms, the way they work, and how hard it is for you to reach your audience….
Your audience is yours.
Perhaps more importantly, email just performs better than social media. This will probably be a surprise given that social media tends to take A LOT more of our time…. But email marketing has much much higher ROI than social media does. Translation: Sending 1 email is much more likely to generate sales or any other kind of action you are asking people to take than posting on social media.
Why am I talking about this?
Because the second thing your website needs to have is a COMPELLING way to collect email addresses.
I want you to think about it this way. If the #1 best outcome of a visitor to your website is for them to purchase immediately, the #2 best outcome is for them to give you their email address. It’s *THAT* important.
No, I am not talking about a little form at the bottom of your website that says JOIN MY NEWSLETTER. Does that sound fun? No one wants to join a newsletter.
You need to give people a good reason why they should give you their precious email address. Something valuable.
For product based businesses, an easy way to do this is to give a discount code in exchange for an email signup, or a code for free shipping.
For service based businesses, think about what would be valuable to your audience? A short ebook? A workbook? A checklist? A cheat sheet? Think about what you could give your audience for free that a) is valuable enough for them to give you their email address, and b) makes them think WOW, she gave this to me for free? How amazing is her paid content?
You can play around with different ways of collecting email addresses -- pop-ups and embedded forms are most common. However, what I use with Station 7 (the retail shop) is a little chat bot that pops up in the bottom right and offers them a discount code, and the amount of people that take me up on that is pretty amazing.
One caveat I will say here is -- we are not collecting people’s email addresses to spam them. We want to always come at it with the approach of providing value MOST of the time, and asking for the sale occasionally.
It’s a big deal for someone to give you their email address - make sure that you are respectful of that.
4. Tell who you are and what you stand for -
People love getting to know people. And so, we need an about page. Yes, so you can tell your audience about your company, but even more importantly, so you can tell your audience about YOU and any story that is relevant to how you got your start with your business.
When we read about and look at other people, we are actively looking for ways to make connections with them.
Think about how often you’ve met someone for the first time and tried to find a person in common that you both know.
Knowing this can help you write an About page that helps your audience connect with you. How?
SPECIFIC DETAILS. Get specific about the things that you like, your hobbies, your background. What do you care about? Where do you love to travel? What kind of books do you like? What’s your favorite cocktail? Into personality tests -- share your type. Have a pet, tell us about them -- or at least mention.
I’m definitely not suggesting you write a novel. But including some super specific and concrete details about you and your life will give your audience an opportunity to connect with you and your brand.
I would also recommend that, whether it’s on your About Page or somewhere else prominent, that you have a section where you tell your audience what you stand for.
For example, on my Good Sheila website, I have a page called “what we care about” which explains the business values that I have.
They are:
Share what we have
Speak up
Spread kindness
Spend intentionally
Reduce impact on the earth
This helps people understand where I’m coming from, and helps them understand where there money is going when they spend with me.
If you’re interested in figuring out what your business values are, I have a great workbook you can download, at makinggoodpodcast.com/goodbusiness.
5. Hold attention
I’m sorry to tell you that I saved the most difficult thing to do for last. But I want to encourage you to approach your website with the philosophy that the longer your audience spends on your website, the better.
The longer they spend on your website, the more they’ll come to trust you, the better they’ll know you and your products. Also, google knows how long people spend on our websites, and if people stick around for a while, it tells Google that your content is good and they should show it to more people.
So, how do we get people to stick around?
The first thing will come as no surprise to anyone who’s listened to me talk about this on and on and on. But you need to write like a human.
Write like you talk. It’s really that simple. Don’t write anything for your business in a way that you wouldn’t actually speak out loud.
If you can make your reader feel like they’re reading a text message or an email you wrote just to them, you have done your job.
If you sell a product, do everything you can to make the experience of browsing through your catalog interesting. Great photos are a good place to start. You can have “recommended products”, starter collections, or gift guides. You can have “if you liked this product, you’ll love these products” on your product pages.
Any way that you can make the shopping and browsing experience EASIER for your audience will be a good thing. When Station 7 introduced what we call Care Packages, I COULDN’T BELIEVE how well they sold. All we did was group a few products together that we knew would complement each other well as a gift, and just this act of simplifying for our customers made them so much more likely to buy those products in the bundle.
Aside from products, if you have content, like a blog or podcast, this is a great asset to you when it comes to your website, and I’d encourage you to make it super easy for people to find ways they can dig into more of your content.
There are so many ways we can think about encouraging people to spend more time on our website, and it’s something you could spend all day working on - every day. It’s definitely not something I do perfectly. But the important thing here is to have this philosophy top of mind when you work on your website -- how can I get my audience to ENJOY spending time here?
And that is my list of 5 Things Your Website Needs.
To review:
1: Immediate Clarity
2. Make it easy to buy from you
3: A (compelling) way to collect email addresses
4. Tell who you are and what you stand for -
5. Hold attention
That is the episode for the day.
You can find the show notes for this episode makinggoodpodcast.com/29.
If you’re interested in the free workbook that will help you get clear on your business values and write about them clearly, head to makinggoopdocast.com/goodbusiness.
I have a favor to ask! If you enjoyed this episode, will you take a screenshot of it in your favorite podcast player, and tag me at @makinggoodpodcast. Tell me one thing you are going to take action on!
Also, it would totally make my day if you’d leave a rating and review on iTunes or Stitcher. Just saying :).
If this is your first time tuning in and you’re interested in hearing more about my businesses, check out my plant-inspired stationery company goodsheila.com, or Seattle retail shop Station 7, station7seattle.com.
Thank you for being here, and for focusing on making a difference with your small business!
Talk to you next time!