As online presence has become an essential part of selling any product, many business owners have made it a point to develop high-converting websites for their businesses. But what if you are a professional service provider wanting to market your services online?
What would you need to do differently than those businesses selling a physical product to drive home sales for your service business? Well, that’s a great question that we would love to answer for you. But before we dive into providing solutions, let's first look into the different roadblocks you and your website may face.
Selling Experience
As an entreprofessional, you are the product. Whether you are a doctor, attorney, engineer, architect, designer, or financial advisor, you are essentially offering your time and expertise along with the promise of a particular result. This is quite different from a physical product.
Being Time-Bound
Your work product is ultimately constrained by the amount of time you have to work. You can only provide services as your time allows, unlike someone selling a physical product that can be stored and shipped on demand.
Establishing Credibility
It can be difficult to prove your ability to deliver measurable results while also emphasizing flexibility. People will want to see proof that you've delivered great results for other clients. They'll also want to know that you're flexible enough to meet their own unique needs.
Relying on Local Traffic
It might not seem appropriate to use a global medium to attract local business. After all, service-based businesses often only serve local clients. Do you think it’s prudent for an owner of a law firm located in California to invest time, effort, and money distributing content to an audience based in Canada? Presumably not. Service-based sites that rely on local customers need to actively pursue a source of local traffic.
There are a variety of ways that you can work toward conquering these challenges. To assist you in short-cutting your efforts, we’ve invested the time to distill the following 3 strategies aimed at helping you to create a website that converts. You can use these keys to transform your virtual brochure into a virtual lead generation and conversion tool.
1. Clarity
You need to be specific about exactly what you're offering. This is such a common mistake found within the content of a website. You have about 8 seconds to make an impression with a compelling headline and landing page. After 8 seconds, the majority of visitors leave. Therefore, it’s important that you are as clear and direct as possible when presenting your offer to website visitors. Above all else … KEEP IT SIMPLE.
Persuasive copy with a detailed description of the outcomes you are offering through your services will be one of the most important tools that you employ on your site.
2. Visibility
Approximately 96% of visitors that come to your website are not ready to buy. However, they may be open to changing their mind. This makes your Call-to-Action a critical element of your website. Your goal is to compel visitors to contact you, to buy from you, to sign up to get more information from you … to act.
Make your contact forms short. Only gather that information that you absolutely need to move your visitor forward to the next step in the journey through your sales cycle. Gather an email address or phone number at the low barrier lead gathering stage. Ask for full names and addresses at the sales stage. In between, well that depends on the nuance of your sales cycle.
Remember that people love options, so giving them more than one way to connect with you enhances the engagement opportunity. Provide your phone number and e-mail address in logical locations on your website. Let prospects connect with you on social media, but be sure to only add links to accounts on which you are active.
3. Legitimacy
Selling a service requires investing more time to establish your credibility and rapport with your audience. You need to effectively highlight the outcomes of the services you're offering along with the unique value of you being the ideal professional to provide them.
Most clients believe that the key difference between a good service company and an exceptional service company is execution. Your website needs to prove that you can execute the services you offer. Shift your mindset regarding messaging, and sell the results, not the services. Placing trust badges on your site along with testimonials from past clients can also be extremely persuasive, but make sure you do not overdo them.
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Follow these guidelines and you’ll maximize your website’s conversion capabilities. If you would like to learn more about how Vimagery helps our clients implement these and other strategies to take full advantage of what the web has to offer, click this link to see if you qualify for a Vimagery Strategy Session. Together, we can work on creating a high-converting website. That way, we can help advance your efforts to cultivate, convert, and close new clients in the weeks and months ahead.
