Boosting your brand means making people aware of your company and product names. But it also includes the objective of getting them to visit your website and contact you. Your site is the hub of all your marketing activity. So, it needs to be set up for a positive visitor experience with value to your prospects. Here are some important elements of a good website, especially for equipment manufacturers and sellers.
Responsive design
This term means that your site is set up to be easily viewed on desktop, tablet or smartphone devices. There are more web surfers on mobile devices (56%) than on desktop computers, according to StatCounter GlobalStats. Unresponsive sites normally distort the way your site appears on mobile devices. They quickly cause visitors to lose interest. If your site is not set up to be viewed easily on these devices, you’ve already lost over half of your visitors.
You want your prospects to have a positive experience on their mobile devices while viewing and learning about the equipment that you’re building or selling. Responsive sites also need to be speedy since mobile users tend to have short attention spans. Check your website’s page loading speed and get optimization suggestions with Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.
There are other benefits of a responsive site including more mobile traffic, lower bounce rates, higher conversion rates, and improved SEO.
Easy navigation
People are likely to visit your site longer if it’s easy to navigate. Keep it simple and consistent throughout the site to make it effortless for people to interact with it. Fancy menu tricks that you think are cool may not be intuitive or appreciated by visitors, especially if awkward to use on mobile devices.
Minimize the number of items on your main menu. If you have to use dropdowns, use “megamenus,” which are big panels with links divided into groups. Research shows that these work well for users and have an SEO advantage when created in a search engine friendly format like HTML. See megamenu examples here.
Avoid categorizing your content by format. For example, place content like videos on the most relevant pages that they individually apply to, rather than grouped under a Videos menu label. The same goes for photos, whitepapers, etc.
About page
Please avoid a boring About page. As an equipment maker or seller, it’s one of the four most important pages on your site along with your home, contact and blog pages. Ironically, it’s often the last to be created and the one with the least thought put into it: “Here’s what we do and how we do it…” Zzzzzzz
Skip the business jargon and keep it human. Prospects want to know who they’re connecting with. Be straightforward in telling them about what your business can do for them. Acknowledge your niche audience’s challenges and goals. Show them that you understand their needs.
Validate your selling points and build trust in your brand by including some customer testimonials. To add credibility, include the names, significant details, and photos of the people whom you’re quoting. Speaking of photos, make the page visually appealing by including a company team photo, perhaps at an inspiring event. If you’re an independent sales rep, use a photo of yourself at a customer job site. A video, an infographic or other media also work well to characterize your brand.
You could also tell your brand’s story. Talk about your roots and the struggles that brought you to the successful point where you are today. Get people to identify and trust you by sharing your past messes rather than your successes. Tell why you do what you do, as brilliantly explained by Simon Sinek in this video. But keep it short. Limit story points to interesting aspects of your journey.
Blog
A blog page on your site is essential to display your active knowledge and expertise of the product or service that you’re selling. Plus, fresh content with regular blog posts will also bring traffic to your site organically through natural search result screens. Therefore, it’s important that your blog is hosted on your website, not on a dedicated blogging platform. Additional traffic can be driven by your social media when you link inviting tweets and messages to your blog posts.
A blog helps show the personal side of your business as an equipment manufacturer or seller. It touches on issues and concerns that interest your prospects while expressing what motivates you and your employees. Humanize your brand to foster likeability and trust.
Building your brand as an authority in your field is another blog benefit. Your industry-related information and insights build familiarity and trust, which keeps you in mind when prospective customers are ready to buy your products or services.
Landing pages for lead generation
Your marketing efforts to drive traffic to your website won’t always be to have visitors start on your home page. Create landing pages for specific marketing objectives or ad campaigns. They are effective in steering visitors toward a specific action that you want them to take. Help your visitors focus by excluding any links to distract or allow navigation (escape) off of them.
For example, an ad campaign promoting a white paper will link to a landing page that is simple. It has an effective headline, legible text, engaging images, and a clear call to action. There are just a few lead-capturing form fields to instantly obtain the white paper.
Landing pages result in higher conversions than linking your promotions to normal pages on your website. That’s because they don’t allow for wandering about. They have a single conversion goal, whether it’s to download a whitepaper, sign up for a newsletter, request a product demo, etc.
Contact page
This is not merely a page with your contact information. It too should be personal and engaging like your About page. In a few words or bullet points, tell the visitor what you can do for them if they contact you. Include a photo of your friendly staff. Don’t rely solely on your About page to create an intriguing impression on a prospect.
Make it easy on the potential customer to contact you. Keep the required form fields to a minimum. As an equipment manufacturer, you would likely only need the person’s name, company, email, and phone number. A subject or message field (that’s optional to complete) may help you prequalify. A location field (again, optional) would permit you to quickly prompt the appropriate sales rep in that territory to make the call. Add checkboxes to make it easy for prospects to convey products or services that interest them.
Manage prospect expectations by telling them when a live person will be available if they call, or how quickly you’ll respond to their email or form submission. Set up auto-replies for your form and email inquiries to acknowledge receipt and reassure a forthcoming response. Your high level of communication will build confidence.
Clear call to action
Providing information about your company, products and/or services on your site is good. Besides that, don’t forget to include a call to action for those finding your site. It may be to watch a video, download some valuable information, contact you for a free consultation or something else. Don’t let them wander and wonder what to do next.
You may already have a site in place or are planning a new one as part of your marketing plan. Ensure that these influential elements are part of it to improve the visitor experience.
