In today’s digital landscape, creating and maintaining a great website for your business is essential when it comes to acquiring new clients. An effective website can also help provide value and excellent customer service to current clients.
Your website is essentially your online storefront, so you want it to be as appealing as it can possibly be. But maybe you feel your company’s website has some room for improvement. In that case, consider implementing some of these useful features.
1. A blog
Starting a blog for your business is a good way to connect with your current customers and build a professional relationship that will keep them coming back to you. It can also be an effective way to reach new customers who otherwise may not have visited your website.
The first and most important step in starting any blog is creating quality content to post. You as the business owner may write the blog yourself, if you’re so inclined, or you could outsource the task to a professional copywriter. Either way, you’re going to want to come up with content that contains relevant and interesting information for your audience.
For example, if your company sells furniture, you might write a blog post that gives readers tips on how to make their home feel more luxurious on a budget. This is called content marketing and it’s an important part of any online marketing strategy.
2. Testimonials
Providing customer testimonials on your website lets people know about the kind of work you do and makes your business seem more trustworthy. Either place a carousel of customer testimonials on your home page or else create a separate page on your website for it.
As far as how to get testimonials that you can post, use any positive feedback you’ve received in the past or reach out to clients you’ve previously worked with and ask for written feedback. Always make sure to ask for permission first before posting any feedback from a customer, though.
When gathering customer testimonials, you’ll also want to ask if you can post their image and real name alongside their written feedback. This way, any potential client reading through the testimonials on your website will know that they come from credible and legitimate sources.
Take, for example, Wix Answers, an all-in-one help desk software that enables businesses to provide their clients with optimal customer support. As you can see in the screenshot below, they list testimonials from the most prolific clients they’ve worked with on their website and go out of their way to attach a real person’s name to the feedback.
Image courtesy of Wix
3. Live chat
By using a live chat feature on your website, you can immediately engage visitors and quickly answer any questions they may have. And, if you use bots or artificial intelligence technology, you don’t even have to have a real customer service agent on the other end of the chat.
You can just download some live chat software and program it to best suit the needs of visitors to your website. With this software, you can engage with customers after they’ve spent a fixed amount of time on your site and set up bots to automatically respond to common questions and keywords.
4. Free calculation tools
Every day, people are searching the web for specialized calculators in order to figure out one thing or another.
Including specialty tools on your website, such as a calculator for something relevant to your business, can be a great way to draw in traffic and attract new visitors. Once they use your free calculator tool to get the answers they need, they may end up exploring the rest of your website and learning more about the products or services you offer.
Here's an example of a calculator done well. GoodLife Home Loans, a reverse mortgage company, created the reverse mortgage calculator (pictured below) for their customers. By providing a useful tool, customers can see what they stand to gain from the company, which helps lead them through the sales funnel.
5. A subscription option
Any good business website should provide visitors with the option to subscribe to more content. Having a visible and easily accessible subscription option on your website will help you build an email list of current and potential clients who express interest in what you offer. The more extensive the email list, the more people you’ll be able to directly contact via email marketing campaigns.
As far as what you should send subscribers, it could be a newsletter, product updates, notifications for new blog posts, exclusive special offers—whatever you decide to send them, just make sure it’s relevant content that increases customer value.
6. A map with your location
If your business has a storefront, you might consider adding a map to your website with the storefront’s location clearly marked. This will allow people to see where your business is located with minimal effort on their part.
Assuming a visitor allows their location to be shared, you could even automatically provide driving directions from their location to your storefront. This is a great way to improve the customer experience on your site and draw in foot traffic, especially if you’re a local business.
A major fast food franchise like Chik-fil-A understands that their storefronts should be easy to find. That’s why they’ve included an interactive map on their website, pictured below, that provides information on Chik-fil-A locations across the country.
7. An FAQ page
An FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page provides visitors to your website, and potential customers, with answers to common questions. Creating an FAQ page benefits both the business and its clients.
By posting the answers to repeatedly asked questions, you as a business owner don’t have to spend time and resources answering the same questions over and over again. On the other hand, a visitor to your website can get their questions answered instantaneously, without needing to send an email and wait for a response. It’s a win-win situation for all parties involved.
8. Growth timeline
Including a timeline on your website that showcases your business’ growth and highlights major achievements in your company’s history can help visitors identify with you and your mission.
A timeline graphic really illustrates to people how far you’ve come as a business. It encourages people to relate to your journey and humanizes the employees whose hard work made the company’s growth possible in the first place.
A timeline can be especially effective for a startup business that has seen growth in the past few years. If potential clients can clearly see that your company has grown, they will assume there’s a good reason for it.
Different features will provide greater value to your company’s website, depending on the kind of business you’re in. A feature that’s highly effective in one industry may not be very useful in another. So, before making major changes, try and get some feedback from your current clients and find out what features they would like you to include on your website.