inbound marketing website design

 

Your customers want to have in-depth, informative conversations and interactions with you and your business. What they don’t want is to become another faceless customer in your contact list. This is where inbound marketing website design comes into play. In your effort to make sure your customers never feel this way, it is important to place valuable customer interactions above your desire to make the sale. You’ll be surprised on the amazing ROI your small business will receive.

 

If your prospects or customers get the feeling that you’re only interested in them to increase your revenue, they’ll end up leaving you and worse start looking toward your competitors instead. Don’t let that happen!

 

 

Start with Your Website Layout

 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, your website will be the first encounter a potential prospect will have with your small business. This means your small business website needs to be fully optimized and informative if you expect the relationship to move through your sales funnel.

 

Your small business website needs to be developed with the user’s experience in mind. Make sure your website has a simple navigation, mobile optimization, logical CTA placement, color theory research, and easy access to your business’ and your products/ services information. Your website design and page content needs to be developed with your ideal searchers in mind. Don’t hide your information, make it stand out! You want your web visitors to contact you, to read and connect with your “About Us” page, and to engage with your product or service pages. The easier it is for visitors to find information throughout the pages on your website, the easier it will be for them to come to the conclusion that they should contact you.

 

small business website development

 

Your website should be filled with helpful and informative pages that are applicable to both your prospects and customers. This means you should have an FAQ section, developed product or service pages, links to your social media accounts, a blog section and so on. Your website needs to be designed to educate, assist, and inform your web visitors, not to sell your services and products to them.

 

Okay, yes, of course you need a certain amount of pages describing what your small business does and how it can help your niche target audience, no one is disputing that. You need to showcase your expertise in niche market area(s) so you end up attracting the right sort of traffic to your website. That being said, don’t make those pages the majority of what’s on your website! Remember, you need to place your customers’ needs and expectations before your desire to make a sale.

 

 

How to Implement Inbound Marketing Website Design

 

There are a few essential components and steps to creating an Inbound-friendly small business website. First, there are five steps in the Inbound website design format:

 

inbound marketing web design

 

1. Identify

2. Understand

3. Plan

4. Action

5. Evaluate

 

 

Step 1. Identify

 

You want to know who’s coming to your website and where they’re coming from. A true inbound marketing website design is customer-centric. Your web page content should correspond directly to who your target audience is and where they are in their buyer’s journey. To do that, you’ll want to set up a Google Analytics account so you can track this data more efficiently. This will assist you in knowing who your target audience is so you can best design your website for them.

 

If you have an older aged audience, maybe you want to use a bigger font style. If you’re targeting millennials, you’ll want to invest in a well-optimized mobile friendly site. If you have a large number of repeat visitors, you want to make sure your have more in-depth and advanced information on your website to keep them interested. Know who’s coming to your website and act accordingly! 

 

 

Step 2. Understand

 

When creating a new web page, ask yourself, “what’s the purpose of this page?” Then follow up with, “So what’s the next step?” If you can answer these two questions with confidence, you know that the content is well written and the design assists with promoting a user-friendly web page. Inbound marketing website design avoids ‘fluffy” content and gets right to the essentials! 

 

 

Step 3. Plan

 

When you create a new content page on your site, always consider where you want visitors go from there. Remember, inbound marketing website design is about giving the visitor the information they want and the steps tp easily achieve it! Not everyone will navigate your site the exact same way, but you can encourage the path you would like them to follow by including well-designed CTA buttons, internal links, social share links and so on. You may even want to consider doing a little A/B testing to determine which layout your visitors respond to the best when it comes to goal completions in Analytics.

 

 

Step 4. Action

 

I cannot emphasize enough how important having and utilizing Google Analytics is for a small business website. In Analytics, you can track and measure metrics and KPIs like CTA rate, bounce rate, audience demographics, goal completions, and so much more! If you’re going to make your website the best it can be, you need to be tracking how it performs and how visitors are interacting with it.

 

 

Step 5. Evaluate

 

Make sure you go through steps 1-4 before you publish a new page. You always need to have tried and tested pages that are well-designed, optimized, fully functional, and informative if your business is going to grow. Inbound marketing website design is not a perfect science because every business’ customers’ needs will be different. Use the tips and suggestions here as a base and create an inbound marketing website design that works best for YOUR website visitors and customers! 

 

 

The Shift to Inbound Marketing Website Design

 

In recent years, the way people interact with businesses has made a dramatic shift. It’s no longer on the shoulders of a company to go out and try to get people to be interested in their business. Now, the power is in the hands of consumers to research and try to locate companies they want to give their business to. For this reason, it’s imperative that businesses, and especially small businesses, implement inbound marketing website design standards to attract the best prospects possible! You can’t expect members of your target audience to reach out to you if they have no way to verify your expertise, access useful content, or research your products and services!

 

Give them what they’re looking for, easily accessible information! Help your website visitors determine who you are and what you do as a small business so they can make an educated decision as to whether or not your business will be a good fit. Your business won’t be applicable to everyone, and yes, you may end up losing some sales because of that (but that’s kind of the point of using an inbound marketing website design). But, the sales and long term customers you’ll gain by deepening your niche will make up for those lost sales by far.

 

Stepping back and allowing prospects to come to you will save your business a lot of time, money, and energy chasing down leads that may not end up going anywhere. If someone comes to your website to check out what you do and how you do it, it’s safe to assume that they’re looking for information or services within your market industry. And if they stay on your site for any length of time, complete a CTA, or provide you with their information, than you really know you’ve struck gold. Knowing those simple metrics will save you valuable resources which can ultimately be reallocated into other areas of your small business.

 

If you start your customer relationships by prioritizing the customer’s needs, you’ll have a better shot at converting them to long term customers. Take care of your customers and they’ll, in turn, take care of your business by continuing to support it.

 

 

In Conclusion

 

Your prospects and customers want to be educated, not sold to. By prioritizing an inbound marketing website design for your small business, you’ll be more able to connect with your ideal target audience by providing them with the information they actually want! If you comply with this inbound marketing customer desire from the start, you have a better chance as a small business to attract and retain more niche customers.