Hello, Jeff Helvin here with Ballen Brands and today I wanted to do a little overview on what we need to make sure we have on our websites.
It’s easy to just get a website, and there are lots of different services to simply put a site up, but I think often times we lose sight of what really it is we’re trying to accomplish by having a website.
The Goal
The goal, of course, is to drive people to the website or have the website be a part of your marketing efforts. Ultimately once we get the traffic there we need to make sure we’re giving the audience what they want.
So here, I am going to review just a few things that help make a website more productive, help us do more lead generation, and ultimately give the end visitor what it is that they’re after.
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Consistent Branding
So first and foremost we want to make sure we have consistent branding on the website and across any of your distribution channels. Your logo needs to be prevalent here – we’ve got our social media links and we want to make sure we have consistency throughout those.
If you’re doing any marketing already and driving people here, they may have seen your brand and when they land on your website we want to make sure that they are comfortable with where they landed, and that it looks familiar with what they did.
If your website is consistent with your brand, we want to make sure also that the marketing you’ re doing to get people to the website is consistent as well.
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Simple Navigation
Next, we want to look at simple navigation. A lot of times we overdo it here and we’ve got so many different things we offer. I understand some companies have so many different categories and avenues, but what we’re trying to do is identify with the visitor and make sure we’re giving them what they want.
In our particular business, we do a lot with websites and real estate IDX. We work with CRMs. We have marketing services that we offer. Those are going to be our main headers.
Now, when I hover over it, there are different website solutions we can offer and under marketing services, there are different services we can offer there. And, of course, we do lead generation and more.
We want to start with “Why are you here?”, “Are you here to look at websites?” Are you here to look at marketing? Are you here to look at CRMs,” and so forth.
We want to keep that navigation simple and not stack it too heavy and overdo what we have up there.
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Next, we want to get into the page structure, so we want to have it more segmented.
* Header & Call to Action
We have our large header, our main call to action here with getting into our different website solutions.
* Main Categories
But as we scroll down we get into more specifics. These are the main categories that we have to offer.
Then we get into some of the price points and what we offer, which people are usually looking for when they come to us.
They want to see what is it that they’re getting involved with and what kind of investment, so we put it right here on the page for you.
* Client Testimonials
Then, of course, we want to get into what our clients are saying about us. Some customer testimonials.
* Contact Us
This is our landing page, we want to make sure we have all the right aspects on the page. Last element, and really the most important in my opinion, is to make sure they have many ways to get in touch with you. You will notice that we have not only put our phone number up here in the header, we’ve got our contact form here if people want more information, in this case, that’s a free consultation and then we have here a phone number again because people are looking at different ways to contact us on the same pages.
This is our home page, but that doesn’t mean that just our homepage needs to have these elements.
Let’s say someone is visiting our real estate websites page, we want to give them what they’re looking for. Here are some suggestions or some options on what we offer, and our different packages and what you get with those packages.
You see the page kind of broken up. Then if we want to get into CRM, we can do that.
What kind of utilities comes with the website that we need to be paying for.
And then here again a way to contact us, price point and a phone number.
So the goal here you’ll see is to be consistent throughout our pages. When I go to a business website instead of real estate website, we show some examples of what we offer.
Some quick bullet points on what it is that we’re offering them, we show some feedback from our customers and then, of course, some contact information.
Now, this isn’t to say that in some cases we might not want to elaborate more, however, what we find is that in our particular line of business our audience doesn’t necessarily know what they want or what they’re looking for so we don’t really want to overwhelm them necessarily with information and hope that they understand what it is we’re telling them.
We might want, instead, to get them to contact us. We’ll see once again we have the branding consistency, we’ve got our simple navigation on each of the pages, we’ve got our segmented page structure, quick and easy access to what it is that we offer, we have the customer testimonials, multiple ways to contact us of course, and ultimately that’s what you’re going to see consistently throughout the pages – not just on the home page but really any page.
Essentially, any page on your website can be considered a landing page and we want to make sure those same elements are intact, and lastly, we want to look at as the website overall as a whole.
We want to make sure it is also flexible and expandable if I need to add another link up here from adding more to this drop-down. You want to make sure that’s easy and consistent.
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SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
You want to use page layouts that you have consistency throughout your pages. If you’ll notice, again, bullet points, image, contact us, it is pretty straight forward on how we offer those and you see that we have some consistency there with our different pages. That’s something you want to keep in mind as well and lastly of course optimized for SEO.
Whether or not you’re actively pursuing search engine optimization or trying to rank on the search engines, it’s always a good idea to still have the right measures in place in order to rank on the search engines.
Search engines are still a great avenue and channel for us to get traffic from, and as they come in we want to make sure that they get what they’re looking for. Having things like a blog is extremely critical for SEO and searching, and how the blog is formatted is also apart of that process.
We choose WordPress as our website platform because it’s very expandable and very flexible and we find that it serves our needs very well.
Blog Concept
Lastly, in the blogs, we also make sure that the content in there is a representation of what it is that you as a business, what you stand for, what you offer, what you’re coaching on, what you care about.
In this particular layout, in these particular offers on what it is that that we do. This helps customers understand our website visitors, I should say that you’re trying to make customers, this helps them understand what it is that you offer and why it’s important and if that resonates with them well then you have a much better opportunity of turning them into a customer.
Related: Content Ideas for Your Real Estate Agent Website with IDX
In Conclusion
So that, in a nutshell, is what we find works well in how we layout our websites and what we recommend you take a look and do a little assessment of your own website if you have one. If any of these elements are missing or you need any help, by all means, please reach out to us at Team@BallenBrands.com.
Have Questions? Ask Ballen Brands!
Contact us at Ballen Brands at 702-917-0755 or email us at team@ballenbrands.com.
