Does your website make the phone ring?

Does your website make the phone ring

A good website can do you a lot of favors : recruit employees, inform potential clients of your products and services, give you credibility in front of your target audience… But let’s be honest, the SME that invest money in developing a website expects it to pay back by gaining new customers.

Leitmotif? We want customers! We want customers!

However, most websites fail to make the phone ring. In my experience, there are five reasons that explain the majority of failures webmaster and SME live with when it comes to converting a web user into a customer.

1. No one can find you

It’s rather hard to convince people to do business with you if you nonexistent in their eyes. Your website needs to be on one of the first two pages of results when someone searches for your target keywords, that’s it. It’s not easy, but with the right strategy, you can do it. Visit WebSelf’s blog often for SEO tips and advices to help you. Unfortunately, if the level of competition in your field of activity is high, it may involve recurring effort and investment from your behalf. This is normal though, considering that SEO is your best weapon in advertising, especially in B2B (business to business)!

2. We don’t understand you you do

A confused positioning or lacking an interesting value can often explain the silence of many phones… Can a 5 seconds visit allow your potential clients to know and understand :
Who you are
What you do
To who you offer your services
How you differentiate yourself from other businesses
If it’s not the case, you will need to take the time to fix that situation!

3. Your phone number is hidden in a corner somewhere

Having an online form that visitors can fill out in seconds and sent out is always a good practise and is a must for all website. However, it’ll never replace an easy to find phone number! A lot of businesses’ websites show no phone numbers whatsoever or have it in a spider web infested page of their website that no one can find. Make sure that your visitors can find your phone numbers quickly. Ideally, you can even put your phone number in the same spot on every pages of your website. Make sure to not publish a never-ending list of all the phone numbers of your every employees and every branch though, since those discourage anyone from calling you. Post one generic number where clients can reach you or organise your list on a specific page.

4. You’re too shy

If you website don’t have any call-to-action, don’t be surprise that people aren’t calling! On the web, as in life in general, ask and you shall receive. Don’t be shy to post requests to call you or invitations to communicate with one of your experts through various expressions :
Contact one of our specialists
Request a quote
Plan an exploratory meeting
Download our case study (in exchange for some details ... of course!)

5. You ignored mobiles.

People are using their mobile to surf the web more and more. If your website is not mobile-friendly, you could easily lose business. Make sure that the most important pages of your website, including the one with your phone numbers, are easily accessible and easy to browse with a smart phone or a tablet. You might need to rethink some of your pages to optimise the display of the more important information on a smaller screen. 

Keep in mind that you have to think of your website like it’s a salesman. With the right tools, guidance and monitoring, it can perform miracles! And the good news is, it’ll never ask you for a commission on your sales! 

Stéphanie Kennan, Blogger at LesAffaires.com [source]