If the answer is no, it could be that you have unintentionally built a wall between your business and potential clients.
Are you struggling to get engagement with your marketing? Do you feel like sometimes you are talking to a brick wall? It’s frustrating putting effort into something when you’re not getting anything back. If you take anything away from this blog it should be – don’t let your website be a brick wall.
Websites shouldn’t be made from brick walls, after all they are not buildings, they are definitely not a garage. Funnily enough, this is how a lot of people manage their websites, like their garage. They are not a dumping ground for anything and everything to do with your business. You can’t expect visitors to your site to navigate a maze of content to find whatever it is that is relevant to them. You have precious little time to get them hooked and then keep them engaged. Websites therefore are not places, websites should be more like people. Full of warmth, empathy, compassion and the ability to change. Adapt.
People develop ideas, create diverse conversations. Change. Grow. We engage with each other – and any business owners looking to convert their audience through a website should be looking to engage them first.
Luckily for you, visitors to your website want something to engage with, something to start a conversation about. Something that interests them. They don’t want a brick wall. So how do you engage that visitor? How can you guarantee they’ll engage with you? You ask them a relevant question. See what I did there?
I’ll use a dinner table analogy. You’re at dinner with friends. You’re talking about football. Maybe you ask them about their favourite team. Maybe you ask them about their least favourite player. Maybe, and this is why it’s important to ask questions, they don’t like football at all. Shocking, I know, but it’s only for this analogy. What do you do when they won’t engage on that level? You find a new topic. A new pathway. You ask a different question. Once you’ve found a path that interests you both, the rest is history. The same works in business or as a website owner. It’s all about asking the right questions.
Asking the right question as a business owner is all about finding ‘the problem’. A problem that can be solved with your product or service. And whilst you can’t ask website visitors what problems they have, thankfully we don’t need to, because they have already asked their question when they started their search on Google. When they subsequently land on your page the content needs to be relevant to them, to the search phrase, it needs to speak in language that will motivate them, it is about them and their problem, show them the solution to their problem. Show them you understand, have empathy, show them proof.
Websites are, at least in my eyes, a sales tool. A bridge between a visitor with a problem, and a service to solve it. You don’t want a brick wall between you and your solution.
You can create a brick wall by accident or overenthusiasm. If you land on a website, with reams of text on the page bestowing the qualities and virtues of this company; ‘they do this,’ ‘they have that,’ ‘this many years in service,’ ‘these qualifications,’ it can be intimidating, or worse. Boring. Engagement disappears in a few strokes of the keyboard. You’ve talked about football too long, now your visitor wants to leave.
How to avoid this accident? Keep it relevant. Keep it clear. Talk about the specific problem your product or service solves. Don’t be a brick wall or a building. Make your website like a person, and watch your conversion rates rise!
