Posts Tagged mobile friendly website design

Are You Embarrassed to Share Your Company Website With Prospects??

Embarrassed to Share Your Company Website With Prospects

 

Recently I spoke to one of our favorite customers, Life Coach Jamie Lightner, about how the new responsive WordPress website we designed for her was working. We were in a group of other women business owners when I asked the question. Jamie’s response to my question actually made most of the women laugh out loud. She said she loved it and mostly she was happy not to have a website she was embarrassed by anymore! Jamie has an authentic sense of humor that is never lost on the crowd.

However, she explained further that the statement was sadly all too accurate. The free DIY website she built when she started her coaching business over 6 years prior really was embarrassing to her. Her experience, her services and programs, and the technology had all outgrown that initial DIY website solution. Of course, as the chosen website design firm I was happy to know how much our new website design has helped her in such a short amount of time. I knew when we started the new website design, organization and updating of content would help her prospecting and for her current clients. What I didn’t consider was the emotional impact the newly branded website would have.

Some of the reasons you may be embarrassed to share  your company website:

 

  1. Life coach, Jamie Lightner responsive website designOutdated design that looks like it is from another decade
  2.  Broken links that prompt 404-page errors
  3.  Confusing navigation that doesn’t lead the visitor where they intend
  4. The website isn’t responsive and is hard to read on mobile devices
  5. No clear calls to action
  6. Outdated services, products, or promotions
  7. Staff members listed who are no longer with the company
  8. No clear brand messaging or visuals
  9. Competitiors websites are modern and have valuable content
  10. The information doesn’t present current level of expertise
  11. …more…

It was rewarding for me to hear Jamie express that her decision to update her DIY website to a professional website design was the best business decision she has made. She now confidently shares her website URL with prospects and customers and she has quickly realized a return on her investments.

 

Want to Love Your Website Again?

Schedule a 100% free, no-obligation 15-minute consultation.

We’ll visit your website while on the call, talk about your goals and offer some insight. Even if your website is embarrassing right now, we can make it shine again – we promise. Let’s Connect

 

I’d like to say the conversation about being embarrassed to share your company website ended there.

It didn’t. Total transparency, I had to share my true confession that Connection Group also found ourselves in that same predicament.  (Obviously, I was feeling pretty safe with this particular group of women business owners!) My confession didn’t receive a laugh like Jamie’s did. The reaction was more surprise, “You? But your company excels at website design and development!”

After being in business for over 20 years our website has experienced many iterations, much revamping, some re-dos. Remember Flash websites? Yes, as cool as all the moving text and dancing graphics were, there was little to no ROI on that website design technology – and we did it in-house!  But, I digress from the point of my story…

Although we have over 20 years of experience in website design and have one of the most talented responsive WordPress developers leading our team our website was sadly outdated. It wasn’t because we didn’t have the talent, or the desire, or the budget, our reason was we didn’t have the time. We were living the proverbial ‘the cobbler’s children have no shoes’ saying. If you are a small business owner you may relate to our position. Basic business principles taught us customer orders, customer service, and billable hours come first.

We now liken our marketing to putting our own oxygen masks on first – before we save others.

Although we were allocating time for brainstorming, re-branding, targeting key audiences, and content planning, the new website was not given the priority it deserved. In the midst of the planning, COVID hit and our existing and new customers needed us even more. Of course, along with the rush of orders, there was the unknown. In addition to the customer projects we were also being proactive and responding to RFPs that we felt were a good fit.

I will never forget the late night preparingto post our RFP response to a web portal. I made the mistake of checking how many other branding firms had submitted responses. To my dismay, that particular RFP had 64 submissions, 64! To further add insult to injury I decided to check out my competition. I definitely needed to put my oxygen mask on after that! For over an hour I perused modern, sleek, contemporary websites that shone bright like diamonds. Talk about being embarrassed to share your company website with prospects! Ugh! It was too late (literally and figuratively) to do anything about it at that point, so I submitted the RFP and went to bed.

In the end, we did rank pretty high in the selection – because our credentials, experience, and cost were competitive and our proposal rocked. However, what I gained was the insight that taking care of our brand needed to be a higher priority. Never, ever may we make excuses or neglect imprtant components of our branding and prospecting ability.

Today, I am proud to see our new website doing its job. Like Jamie, I too appreciate the ease in updating it with the new front-end editor, the clear brand focus, and imagery we have developed. We took our time to hone in on the services that we do best and we have simplified the navigation and content to make it clear to our customers and prospects. Would we have won that RFP if this new website design was in place earleir? I’ll never know, either way, I know I always want to honor our brand, our abilities, and show our expertise. I want to proudly post our website everywhere and know the information is up to date, attractive, and fully functional on all screens.

So, that’s our story. What about you? Are you embarrassed to share your company website? If so, don’t wait any longer, I promise you, your competition isn’t waiting. Connect today, we’re happy to craft a professional, responsive website you will be proud to share and update for years to come. 

Stay connected!

Hurry and reserve your 15-minute slot today!

Commit to starting the new year strong. All of our websites come with step-by-step training. You and your team will know exactly what to do to keep your website up-to-date.  Let’s Connect

Google Has Done it Again… small businesses need mobile friendly websites – STAT!

Stats showing small business need mobile friednly websites diesgn. Smart phone  search increase 17%, tablets 28%,, desktop searches down -1%

If you haven’t heard already you may be one of the few left on the planet who doesn’t live and breathe all that is the internet. What is being referred to as  “mobilegeddon” (don’t you love tech-nerds?) or, Google’s mobile website algorithm change launched last week. Small businesses need mobile friendly websites now more than ever. The algorithm change was announced two months back very clearly by Google and they actually went ahead and launched it on the pre-determined deadline, Tuesday, April 21, 2015. What the change means to small businesses who do not have mobile friendly websites is that your company website will either not come up in mobile Google searches or if it does, it will come up so far down it might as well not come up at all.

I can hear some of you now, ‘So, what? Most people search our site from a desktop computer.’  ‘We provide a service, people don’t search for us on their smart phones or tablets, they wait until they get home and research on their computers.’ Not so my friends. “In the final three months of last year, estimated 29 percent of all U.S. search requests – about 18.5 billion – were made on mobile devices.”   – comScore.com

The increase in numbers from desktop to mobile searches will continue to grow. The largest percentage of mobile searches currently are done by people shopping for products, however local services searches are not far behind. “Searches with local intent are more likely to lead to store visits and sales within a day. New Google research says that 50 percent of mobile users are most likely to visit (the store) after conducting a local search, while 34 percent of consumers on tablets or computers will go to a store.” – Search Engine Watch

Mobile searches are steadily increasing for local services including, home healthcare services, restaurants, home improvement services and more.small businesses need mobile friendly websites now to come up in those search inquiries.

  “According to Google, 56% of searches on smartphones have local intent. ” – Wordstream

Searches-Infographic2Google is the top-ranking search engine claiming two thirds of United States web searches and even more in other countries. Mobilegeddon has the potential to effect sales volume especially for small businesses who have not had a strong reason to upgrade to a mobile friendly website yet. If we give an example of  a residential home builders website in Lansing who has not upgraded the website since mullets were in style, compared to a national residential home builder with a mobile friendly website targeting Lansing clientele – where would you place your cards on search results?

Not sure if your small business website is mobile friendly or not?

Check out Googles “Mobile-Friendly” test page in its developer section. Type in your website URL (domain name) and see the results. (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/.

Mobile Friendly Website Solution for Small Business

If you do not have a mobile friendly website and you are ready to make the change, you have a few decisions to make. First you can choose to keep your desktop website as it is and create a completely separate mobile website to satisfy mobile users (and Google!). The drawback to this solution is you now have two websites you must maintain. The other option is a responsive website. Responsive WordPress websites format to fit which ever screen size a visitor is using. On a desktop monitor the website looks good on the screen without unplanned scrolling or clicking. On a tablet it condenses slightly to fit the screen with limited scrolling and on a smart phone the navigation will collapse to a drop down screen. All of this is automated with a responsive website design. The other benefit of a responsive website design with WordPress is small businesses can now update their own website without programming knowledge. Updating is also easier because you only have to update one site instead of a desktop website and a mobile website.

Mobile-Friendly Website Design considerations:

  • design web pages so that they load quickly
  • make content easily accessible
  • page scrolling up and down (as opposed to left to right swiping)
  • make call to action buttons (like BUY NOW!) easily seen and touched even on small screens
  • make your contact information clickable – click to call, click to map location
  • make your text size large enough to read on small devices

No budget for a small business mobile-friendly website right now?

Or do you have a mobile-friendly website on order but all the local website design firms in Michigan or your state are booked solid a few months out? Since Google searches do show local listings first make sure all your local information is current. Get a Google+ page set up if you haven’t already, check your Yelp listing. Get your website listed on Google in Google MyBusiness section. These steps will help while you are working toward upgrading your website to mobile.

If you’re one of those small businesses who need a mobile friendly website right away, give us a call today! We are taking  orders and turning custom designs around as quickly as possible. We also provide mobile-friendly  Wordpress responsive website design solutions for those of you who want the freedom to access and update your own website .

Stay connected!