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Have you ever gone to a company's website expecting to find a professional look & feel,
and were sorely disappointed by a cheap looking layout, and text
that really made them come off as amateurs?
We all have, right?
Today's video is all about making sure that this never happens to YOUR website!
Keep watching this video if you want to find out how to have a website that actually converts
visitors into customers and makes you money!
My name is Alex Beadon, you are watching Chatty Tuesday,
the best video series to watch if you want to up your game in the
world of business, make more money and do what you love.
Did you know that a 2006 study published
in the journal Behaviour and Information Technology
found that the brain makes decisions on the quality of a website within
one 20th of a second? Crazy, right?
In less than a second, people are making
rapid judgements about you and your business
based on your website.
So you don't have much time to convince visitors
with your about me page or your pretty pictures
that you're the bomb dot com
if you don't get the immediate approval from the first impression.
Having designed four websites for my business, I've learned a ton of lessons along
the way.
Today I'm going to share some top tips with you that I wish I knew from day
one.
Let's start with the basics: Have your own domain.
For example, if your website ends in .blogspot.com
it immediately gives off the impression that you are an amateur.
No matter how great your content is, people will not take you seriously unless
you have your own domain.
For example, my website is alexbeadon.com - it is not alexbeadon.wordpress.com.
Most people skip this part because they are worried of
the expense, or don't know how to figure it out.
But here's the truth : if you're serious about your business,
which I know you are, at some point or another you are going to have to have your
own domain,
so you might as well start now because you definitely don't want to build a following
at a
dot.blogspot.com and then lose readers and potential customers
when you finally make the switch to your own domain.
At around $100, getting your own domain is totally
worth it.
If you don't know where to start, check out my web hosting company at bluehost.com,
I highly recommend them.
Tip Number Two: Don't be afraid to invest in your web presence.
If you've ever been to a website that has text at the
bottom saying "made by wix, build your own website today for free!" you'll know what
I mean when I say that it turns people off.
If you can't take your business seriously enough to invest
money in a template that isn't for free,
why should I invest my money in you and your business?
There are plenty of options for designing your own website that
are low budget and have a professional feel.
If you're looking to create a blog on Wordpress, I always
recommend to look into Thesis or ProPhotoBlogs.
These come up to around $200, I've used both and
highly recommend them. But if you want to keep it simple, a quick google search for
WordPress themes will do the job.
I promise you'll be able to find one that's professional
looking for less than $50.
Tip Number Three: Be 100% clear on the main purpose of your website.
The other week I was talking to a business owner
called Sally who had no idea what the purpose of
her website was.
How can you have a website that's an integral part of making your business
a success if you don't know what the purpose
of it is?
My advice for her, and my advice for 90% of the small businesses I speak to is this:
get clear on the purpose of your website. All of your marketing efforts should aim to
bring people to your website. And your website's
main purpose should be to convert those interested people into paying customers.
We get so caught up in trying to make ourselves look cool on
our website that we forget that the whole point
is to get sales!
How do you do this? Well, there are many ways to do this but today I'm going
to focus on one which brings me to tip number 4
Include call to actions.
This one tip is SO EFFING IMPORTANT and has the power to revolutionise how many
people your website converts into sales!
So here's the interesting thing:
Meclabs did an experiment with a large financial institution that will blow your mind.
They experimented with 2 call to action buttons.
One said "Save automatically with a savings account.
Learn More."
And the other said "Save automatically with a savings account.
Open an account."
Everything else stayed the same - except the final
call to action : Learn More versus Open An Account.
And guess what? The "Open an account"
link encouraged a 43% increase in conversion
when compared to the "Learn More" link.
So yes, having a call to action - and a good,
specific one at that -
really has the power to make a difference in the number of sales you
do through your website!
Small changes can make a huge difference, so start experimenting
with your own call to actions on your own pages!
Tip Five: dont forget to KISS Keep it simple, stupid.
Do you know what it takes to scare away an interested customer?
The smallest detail.
In 2009, Google and Bing, two of the largest search engines,
found that a less than 2 second increased page load time
resulted in revenue loss per user of 4.3%.
So, let me summarise that for you: something as
seemingly trivial as a slow loading website will
result in lost sales from people who are too
impatient to wait for what you're trying to sell.
Like I said, the smallest detail.
It could be the fact that they can't find the right link to
click on to purchase your product.
It could be an ugly photo of your product.
It could be one misspelled word.
Getting a potential customer to visit your website, stay on your website, and
purchase from your website is hard.
It's like when a lion is trying to catch his pray,
he moves in slowly,
never making a sound,
because the smallest mistake could alert the antelope
who might have a chance to escape.
So - I'm telling you what I tell everyone when
it comes to building a website that converts sales:
make your website so easy to purchase from, that a monkey could do it.
Make it super clear which button you want them to hit next,
what they have to do to book you, where they have to press to get your product.
Make it so easy and obvious for them to purchase from you, that they don't have to
think about. Because if they have to think -
which link do I have to press to get where I want to go, you're giving them one more
reason to leave your site for good.
So - here's a recap for you:
Step One: Have your own domain name.
Step Two: Don't be afraid to invest in your web presence.
Step Three: Be 100% clear on the main purpose of your website.
Step four: Include Call to Actions.
and Step Five: Keep it simple, stupid.
Your Chatty Challenge for this week, if you choose to accept it, is to work on
at least one of these steps
with the goal to accomplish them all.
I also want you to let me know what turns you off of a website?
What is the number one thing that annoys you the most about websites?
Is it a website that has music? Is it a website that's confusing?
Or maybe a website with colored text on a black background?
Take the time to leave a comment sharing your number one
website pet peeve.
That way we can help each other out with a huge checklist of things NOT to do on our
websites.
If you loved today's video, make sure you get on our
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Thank you so much for watching this week's Chatty Tuesday.
Have a beautiful week, and if you've signed up to
alexviplist.com or subscribed to this channel, I will for
sure see you again next week! I can't wait! Bye!