Introduction

Whether it’s 9 to 5 or 5 to 9, customers want to be able to reach you instantly and get the information they need. And your business wants to ensure no opportunities or revenue slips through the cracks of a poorly built website.

A website is just as important for today’s buyers as a brick-and-mortar location. In fact, more than 97% of consumers conduct research online before visiting a local business or service area.

And who can blame them? Being able to book appointments, schedule meetings, contact a company, or make a purchase — from anywhere — is convenient! Plus, the ability to scale services online helps many businesses grow faster and work more efficiently.

Still, for small local businesses, the development, maintenance, and cost of building a website with all the bells and whistles can feel daunting. The good news is — it doesn’t have to be. Companies have more options than ever before to build and optimize high-conversion websites.

The Pillars of a High-Performing Website

Your website is the most valuable piece of digital real estate that your business owns. You want your customers to find it equally valuable, which means that you need to think beyond its curb appeal (aka visual design). To improve website conversion rates, you want to make sure every aspect of the experience — from finding information to taking actions like contacting your business or booking an appointment — can be done with as little friction as possible.

To make your website relevant, easy to use, and effective, you need to have the following:

Personas: Know Your Customers and Visitors

Knowing your audience and what they care about is fundamental to any marketing activity, including website conversions. To make sure your site will engage your target audience, you need to create what are known as buyer personas.

A buyer persona is a fictional but detailed description of an individual who represents your target audience. The persona should include demographic details like age, job title, where they live, number of kids, and even lifestyle information like hobbies they enjoy. It should also include their goals, challenges they face, and objections they may have to purchasing your product or service.

To gather all this information, you will need to conduct research into your target audience. Then, you can create a persona based on a composite of those interviews and research. If you have more than one target audience, you should create a buyer persona for each audience visiting your website.

MarketingSherpa

Using buyer personas will help you improve your website conversion rates. You’ll know exactly what your audience cares about and what problems they are trying to solve when they visit your website and can tailor your website to help customers solve those specific issues. As a bonus, you can also use your personas for creating all types of marketing content for your business — ads, articles, emails, and more – all of which can then help drive more traffic to your website!

When it comes to building a buying persona, you want to focus on six key areas: 

Creative & Copy: Have a Clear and Consistent Brand Identity

Your brand identity is a key part of the customer experience and separates you from your competitors. For example, Starbucks’ brand identity is very different from Dunkin’ Donuts — and each unique brand identity sends a clear message about who their brand is right for.

If you want a more sophisticated coffee experience and are willing to pay for it, Starbucks is your coffee shop. But, if you just want a good cup of coffee at a reasonable price and don’t care about having a nice place to hang out, you’re more likely to pick Dunkin’ Donuts.

Research shows that when brand consistency is maintained revenue can increase by 10-20%. But over 77% of companies deal with off-brand content.

To ensure your brand identity is clear and consistent — not just on your website but across both the online and offline experience — it’s crucial to set brand guidelines. Establish clear rules and standards for all written and visual materials, including colors, fonts, logos, and the tone and voice of your brand. Then, make sure you enforce those guidelines by ensuring your website visuals, copy, and layout all follow those guidelines as well as the rest of your marketing materials.

The company below does a nice job of conveying calm and trust with its color palette, images, and logo. Customers visiting their website find a brand that ties the visual look and feel of their website to their brand identity of being trustworthy.

Communication: Make it Easy to Connect With You

Customers want to reach you, but they also want it to be simple. When it comes to optimizing your website, there are any number of ways customers can connect with you — and all of them should be easy to find and easy to execute:

• Make your contact information available on your home page: Once on a company’s homepage, 64% of visitors want to see the company’s contact information, and 44% of website visitors will exit a website that fails to display contact info.
• Have a contact page: Your Contact Us page is one of the most-visited site pages on your website, especially for small local businesses. So make sure your website has one.
• Use click-to-call for mobile websites: 61% of mobile searchers state that click-to-call is most important in the purchase phase of the shopping process.
• Add live chat: 82% of customers want an immediate response when they have a question. Live chat fills this need. Local businesses like Portland Window Coverings have seen web interactions increase as much as five times using Podium’s Webchat. Learn how to add your own free chat tool here. 

CT Braces follows all of these best practices. As you can see, it’s easy to find their contact information on their home page and their Contact Us page features prominently in their menu bar at the top. Chat is also available and click-to-call on their mobile-responsive website.

Discoverability: Prioritize SEO & Promotion

It’s important to make your website “discoverable” on search engines like Google if you want to drive new traffic to it. To rank high enough on Google or other search engines for visibility, you should invest in search engine optimization (SEO) and paid advertising.

Optimize for SEO

SEO is one of the primary ways customers find local businesses and should be a key area of website lead generation you invest in to drive traffic to your small business website. A comprehensive SEO plan should also account for your blog, product pages, homepage, and even external assets like your Google Business Profile Listing.

Use frequently searched keywords and phrases and local city or regional keywords throughout your website. This strategy will boost your SEO rankings and help drive more traffic to your website. You can use an online keyword finder if you’re not sure what are the best or most popular keywords for your business. According to Imforza:

Promotions

Many shoppers are focused on price — four out of five Americans say finding a great deal or a discount is something they think about during the entire purchase journey. Offering free shipping or buy-one-get-one-free promotions can help with website lead generation and conversions.

You can further improve your offers by testing different promotions to see which perform best. You can also tie your promotions to specific actions you want someone to take. For example, if you’re trying to grow your text marketing list, you can offer 10% off the purchase to anyone who signs up for your text marketing promotions.

Choose the Right Website Builder 

A small business website builder makes it easy and cost-effective for you to build and maintain your website without hiring a developer. To keep costs down and make updates easy for employees to do on their own, website builders use pre-made templates.

However, there are many website builder options to choose from. Figuring out which one is best for your business will depend on your specific goals, budget, and requirements. To help, here’s a look at the best website builder options in the marketplace and the pros and cons of each one. 

WordPress

WordPress is the backbone of most websites on the internet. It offers a wide variety of professional templates or themes to choose from, and all templates are mobile-friendly and SEO ready. WordPress is also a great option for eCommerce sites and has strong social media integration. The best WordPress sites can use a template or theme and add creativity to it.

The major downside to WordPress, especially if you’re considering creating your website in-house and don’t have any previous experience with WordPress, is that it can be harder than other website builders to navigate when designing and maintaining your site.

It can also be more costly than other website builders to design and maintain. While the platform is free, it typically requires themes and plugins to use it effectively — and these tools usually aren’t free. The more plugins you use, the higher the cost of your website to build and maintain, as you must frequently update plugins and ensure they remain compatible.

Bottom line: If you’re using an agency, WordPress will most likely be their go-to website builder, and you won’t have to worry as much about maintenance because the agency can maintain your site for you. If you’re building your website in-house, WordPress can still be a good option, but you’ll want someone who has some knowledge of WordPress working on the project.

Wix

Wix is a cloud-based website builder, which means they will host your website and manage site security. Wix has a user-friendly interface that allows you to use drag-and-drop tools and over 500+ ready-made templates, making it fairly easy for anyone to build a website without any specialized web design or programming skills. It is one of the most affordable options on the market, and because of the ease of use, you can have a website up and running in a matter of days.

While Wix’s all-in-one solution and ease of use are appealing, and it does support eCommerce businesses, its drag-and-drop designs can limit creativity. Even the best Wix websites often feel more templated than those built on WordPress, which could risk customers perceiving your business as less sophisticated than your competitors. SEO is also difficult on Wix, and they don’t offer many app integrations.

Bottom line: If your business just needs a simple website, Wix can be a good solution. But if you need more robust functionality or want to look more professional, you may want to seek out a different option.

Shopify

Shopify is an eCommerce platform. It is a subscription-based software that allows you to set up an online store and sell your products. If you have a physical store, you can use Shopify’s point-of-sale app in your store.

The biggest advantage of Shopify is that it’s easy to use. It also has world-class site performance, works with a lot of payment processors, and has a lot of themes and built-in features that can help boost sales. The cons of Shopify are that it can be expensive, and it is harder to customize a theme.

Bottom line: If your business focuses primarily on eCommerce and selling products, then Shopify might be a good option. If your business is focused more on professional services, then Shopify is probably not the best fit.

Squarespace

Squarespace is similar to Wix – and they share the same pros and cons. Like Wix, Squarespace is a cloud-based website builder tool aimed mainly at small business owners with an easy-to-use interface, drag-and-drop tools, and templates.

The biggest differences between Squarespace and Wix are that Wix gives you more flexibility with its editor tool, but it can be harder to use. Wix also has more templates than Squarespace, but many feel that the best Squarespace website templates are better than Wix’s. Likewise, while Wix offers more features — such as live chat, forums, takeout orders, and ticketing/RSVP — Squarespace tends to do a better job at the features it does support. Its restaurant menu, for example, is much easier to design on Squarespace than on Wix.

Bottom line: If you’re choosing between Wix and Squarespace, the final decision will likely come down to what features you need, which website builder best supports those features, and whether you prefer Wix or Squarespace templates.

Agency vs. In-House

If DIYing sounds like too much to take on, there are benefits to hiring an agency. An agency will still use a website builder, such as WordPress, but they will manage the entire project and do the work, which frees up your time and resources to focus on your core business.

There are many benefits to using an agency, including:

• Professional expertise: The agency will have the expertise to know how to get the most from the design template you choose and can guide you in how to design your website to make it easy for customers to navigate.
• WordPress expertise: WordPress offers the most flexibility and extensive library of templates out of all the website builders, but it is also a little more difficult to learn how to use. An agency will have WordPress expertise.
• Speed: Because they already have the skills to create websites using templates and website builders and the ability to have dedicated resources working on the project, they will likely be able to move much faster than your internal team.
• Ongoing support: An agency can continue to support your small business website post-production by handling security updates and any copy or visual updates you want to make.

The biggest downside to using an agency versus building your website in-house is typically cost. The greater the customization the agency provides in the design or widgets you use, the greater the cost will be. Other concerns are that an agency may not know your business’s culture and brand identity as well as your in-house team. You will also have less control and ownership of your website when you have an agency build and maintain it.

Bottom line: If you lack the in-house skills or resources to build your website and have the budget to hire an agency, you’ll likely find the process faster and smoother and have a more professional-looking and functional website when you’re finished. But if the budget is tight or you have a knowledgeable in-house person to help, there are many other great options.

Design a Best-in-Class Website Experience

A professional website demonstrates your business’ credibility, conveys to your audience what your business does, how you can help them, and converts customers by getting them to take the desired action — whether that’s booking an appointment, making a purchase, or calling, or texting your business to get more information.

Best-in-class websites make all these activities as seamless as possible for visitors by following some crucial web design best practices.

User-Friendly Navigation for Desktop & Mobile

Today’s consumer is mobile. More than half of all internet traffic comes from a mobile device, making it crucial that you prime your website for mobile as well as desktop. Using a mobile-responsive design is essential and is something every website builder offers. A mobile-responsive design means that your site will adjust automatically to the size of the screen and present the information in a clear and easy-to-navigate way.

Other ways to improve the mobile experience include making sure your load times are fast and limiting the amount of information gathering on forms. For example, if you’re a bank and customers fill out a loan application online, prepopulate as much information as you can for your customers from your database, including their name, birthdate, address, etc. If you’re using pop-ups, you also want to make sure they’re mobile-friendly.

• 93% of people who use mobile to research a product or service make a purchase
• 85% of people think a company’s mobile website should be as good or better than desktop
• 57% of mobile users won’t recommend a business if the mobile experience is poorly designed or unresponsive
• 37% of consumers are more likely to buy on a mobile-responsive site

Social Proof & the Power of Reviews

Customer reviews and testimonials have a significant impact on influencing a person’s decision to do business with you. In fact, 84% of people trust online reviews just as much as a recommendation from a friend. Similarly, nearly two-thirds of consumers say positive customer testimonials increase their trust.

The quantity, quality, and diversity of online reviews can also impact SEO — accounting for about 10% of the total weight of over 200+ ranking factors in Google’s search engine algorithm for local businesses. 87% of consumers say reviews influence them in discovering a local business.

Small businesses have an advantage over national chains on a local SEO level if they can consistently get new and authentic reviews. Moreover, 97% of people read reviews for local businesses before engaging with them. Building an online reputation via reviews with Google, for instance, is incredibly important to businesses looking to grow and reach their audience.

AB Roofing & Painting is a great example of including reviews on a roofing local business website. Their navigation menu has a page where visitors can see recent reviews they’ve received as well as a button to leave a review, helping the business keep a steady flow of incoming reviews.

Using a tool like Podium Reviews can make getting reviews for your website easier. Instead of asking customers over the phone or sending an email invite, Podium allows you to send an invite via text. Because 98% of texts get opened versus 20% of emails, you get a lot more responses to your request for review.

Headlines & CTAs

Headlines and calls-to-actions (CTA) are two of the most critical design and copy components of any small business website and play a key role in improving conversions. For instance, 80% of people will read a headline, but only 20% will read other content on your website. And a strong CTA that is personalized converts 202% better than standard CTAs.

Here are some best practices to help you improve the performance of both your headlines and CTAs.

Headline Best Practices

Strong headlines are essential for quickly conveying your key messages. Here are some tried and true tips to make sure your headlines perform well:

• Make it engaging. Your headline should be concise, but irresistible. To find the perfect headline, writers at BuzzFeed write upwards of 20 headlines before picking one that will drive the most traffic. Take time to work and rework your headlines until you find the perfect one.
• Keep it short. Headlines should be between six to 12 words. If you can get it to six words or fewer, even better.
• Be specific and clear. Your headlines should address your target audience’s problems or concerns, and your audience should be able to understand the message quickly and easily.
• Use SEO keywords. Using keywords and phrases in your headline that are gaining the most traction on the web will help your website rank better with search engines.
• Test frequently. Try different versions of a headline and see if one impacts bounce rates or click-thru rates more than another.

CTA Best Practices

The right call to action can be a powerful conversion tool. But the key is making sure that your CTA copy is compelling and that the placement and visualization of your CTA easily draws your visitor’s eye to it. The color of your CTA is also important. Pick a color that will stand out, but to determine what color, copy, or placement of your CTA is best, you’ll need to test. Test each part of your CTA one at a time to know whether what you changed has an impact.

Valentine Roofing offers an example of a strong, specific headline that conveys the problem with a subhead that discusses how they can solve the problem. There is also a clear CTA, prompting visitors to take action and schedule an appointment.

Eye-Catching Design

Design is one of the most important aspects of your website. In fact, 75% of consumers judge a business’s credibility by its website’s design and 94% of negative website feedback is design-related. Moreover, it only takes about 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website, so you want to make sure that whatever page they land on, they’ll be impressed.

What goes into a good web design? Here are some best practices to follow:

• Keep it minimalistic. Too much clutter on a page makes it hard for your visitors to find what they’re looking for. Simple, clean designs are typically preferred and are often a powerful but under-utilized tool that can significantly impact your local small businesses’ lead conversion metrics. Consider capitalizing on white space, concise wording, and a very simple link flow to attract visitors and keep them coming back.
• Use photos. Google has found that listings with feature photos receive 42% more requests for driving directions from Google Maps and 35% more clicks through to a website. Use high-quality, relevant, and appealing images throughout your website.
• Lead with a hero image: Your hero section of the website is the top section of your webpage and usually where the eye lands first. It provides the perfect opportunity to capture your audience’s attention with a strong headline and image that perfectly and simply sums up your customers’ challenge and how you solve it.

Dr. James Catt DMD does a great job with his website design, which is clean and clutter-free. The background image implies a natural setting that is simple enough that your eye is drawn to the perfect, relaxed smile of the person in the hero image. The navigation bar is also simple, and the excellent use of white space emphasizes the navigation headings. The site projects a calm and natural ambiance, which is exactly what most patients want to feel at the dentist.

Connect with Customers Online

Customers are generally coming to your website to solve a problem, whether it’s a clogged toilet, trying to figure out how much it costs to take out an auto loan, or booking an appointment to see a doctor. A high-performing website makes it easy for customers to get the answers they seek and connect with your local business when they’re ready for your product or service.

Align Touchpoints with Your Business Needs

Easy-to-use tools that make it simple for customers to connect with you will help you boost your website conversion rates, get more customers, and give them a better experience.

Here are some tools your business can use on your website to make it easier to connect and communicate more effectively with your customer.

Website Chat Tools

Website chat tools allow customers to communicate directly with your local business online. Typically, a webchat window opens, and the customer can type in their question and get a response in seconds. According to Forrester, consumers who use chat are 2.8 times more likely to convert than those who don’t. However, the chat experience and the capabilities your chat tool offers will vary depending on the type of chat you use.

Live Chat

More than half of all customers prefer to chat with someone in real-time and online, rather than call a company for support. A recent survey reported that live chat leads to a 48% increase in revenue per chat hour and a 40% increase in conversion rate.

The biggest benefit of live chat over chatbots is that customers speak to a real person. This builds more of a relationship with the customer, but it also helps ensure they get their question answered — which isn’t always the case with a chatbot.

Webchat

Webchat is similar to live chat in that it connects your customers to a real human to get their questions answered, but it goes a step further – taking the conversation immediately to text. The value is that the conversation doesn’t end when the customer leaves your site.

Additionally, customers are more responsive to a text than other communication channels like email. Not only are 95% of texts read within three minutes, but texting is also proven to increase sales conversions by over 100% compared to following up via phone call or email. Plus, tools like Podium Webchat make it incredibly easy for the customer to chat on your website or via text.

Chatbots

Chatbots can be used to understand and respond to customers’ questions and help them navigate through a website. As many as 80% of businesses are now using chatbots on their websites, helping them reduce customer service costs by more than 30% and providing a 24/7 assistant to help customers.

While chatbots work great for simple questions or specific use cases, for more complicated requests, most people will want to talk to a real person, so it’s best to have a live chat solution as well as a chatbot, if possible.

Scheduling on Your Customer’s Time

While today’s customers love the ability to reach out in the moment, it’s important to be flexible. Online appointment scheduling systems allow customers to book from your team’s available time. This is particularly powerful for companies that offer services or fieldwork. 

An appointment scheduler further reduces friction in the buying process. It eliminates the need for customers to get on the phone or coordinate appointments over email. 

Coupling an online scheduling tool with text marketing provides real-time confirmation for customers. It also makes it possible to modify, cancel, or change upcoming appointments without needing to reach out via email or phone. 

Using Forms the Right Way

Forms are another great way to capture leads on your website or respond to customer questions. The location of your form directly impacts the probability of it being seen by your prospect. The content above the fold on a web page is viewed 102% more than information even just below the fold. Eloqua suggests somewhere between three to seven fields to maximize your chances of form completion.

When setting up a form, the top field suggestions include name, email address, and phone number. Business name and industry are close seconds if it makes sense for your business.

Generally speaking, you will see a 25% website conversion rate with only 3 fields in a form, a 20% conversion rate with three to five fields, and a 15% conversion rate with more than six fields. So, the shorter you can make your form, the better.

Simplifying Payments

Use can also make it easier for customers to pay for products or services by adding easy payment methods. Using Podium, for example, you can simplify the payment process by offering and collecting payments from customers via text.

Ranking For SEO and Local Search

As a local small business, getting ranked can be challenging — especially as more businesses recognize the value of local SEO, making the results more competitive. But because SEO is such a powerful play and key to discoverability, it’s important to optimize for local search.

What is Local Search Marketing & SEO?

Local search marketing focuses on improving your site’s visibility across a local search territory, allowing you to connect with consumers in your area. While SEO and local search marketing use similar strategies, there are some specialized local SEO solutions to help you improve your local rankings.

Local search is key if you’re wondering how to build lead generation. For instance, when someone searches for a local business, such as a plumber or a dentist, Google displays what is called a “map pack” above the regular search results. This “map pack” features the top three businesses in the area that are relevant to the search term. Getting your company in this “top three” list can dramatically improve business results as people tend to contact those businesses first.

How to Improve Your Local Search Ranking

The primary local search ranking factors include:

• Location of the searcher to your business
• Whether your company has a GoogleBusiness Profile listing
• The number and positive rank of your business’ online reviews
• Whether the search keywords are also found in your online reviews
• The number of unique times your business information is shared on social media
• Google Maps rating of your business
• The number of online citations that refer to your business

To direct traffic to your website and increase website leads, you need your business to be part of the Google Map Pack. When someone Googles “plumber near me,” yours should be the first one they see. In addition to the ranking factors listed above, it’s also important to keep your business NAP (name, address, phone number) consistent across all of your directory listings. Make your listings as accurate and clear as possible, and be sure to update them immediately after any changes such as moving, changing a brand name, etc.

Press Send with Podium

Ensure your website is a high-performing lead generation and conversion machine. With Podium, the interaction management platform your business needs, you create the best possible website experience for your visitors.

Build trust: Make it easy to gather and showcase reviews on your site.

Convert leads: Let customers reach you via chat and keep those conversations going via text.

Delight visitors: Make it easy to connect, communicate, and pay all through a single, secure platform.

Want to get started with Podium now? Start a free trial today.