The poor design of your plumbing companies website could be costing you business. Website design is not just the graphical elements on the page. Good website design is a lot of little things that come together to create the big picture. If just one of these things is overlooked, the conversion could really hurt your company.
- Poor Visual Design
If a website is designed poorly it gives your plumbing business the impression of being sloppy, unorganized and little attention to detail all of the traits someone hiring a plumber wants to avoid. Let's face it you would not have your nephew design the signage on your trucks. Just because he has a computer and the latest copy of "Building Websites for Dummies" does not mean he is qualified to build you companies website presence. - Poor Navigational Design
Often overlooked is the navigational structure of a website, the navigational structure of your website has to be thought out and positioned in the right place in order for potential customers to properly navigate your site. Also make sure all the navigation on the site is text links, not image links. Search engine spiders are text readers and will follow the text based navigation to index all the pages on your website. Image links and Flash animation navigation may look cool but they are road blocks for search engines. - Video That Does Not Represent Your Business
Video on your website is great, it does so much for your website including customer engagement, increased time on site for search engines and helps conversion by educating your potential customers. Make sure the videos are custom to your business, so many times I have come sites that have videos that are just plain generic to their industry and really serve no purpose. Another bad video process is using videos to advertise your business. Remember people are already on your website, stop outbound selling and start educating them, no one wants to watch commercials. The best use of videos is informational and educational. Videos should add value. - Mismatched Website Pages
Nothing is more annoying than websites where every page is different. This usually happens because you built your website and then hired a new inexperienced person to update it, rather that being the website professional and advising you to redesign because the existing structure is poorly created they just add their new design to your old design, creating a nightmare for your website visitors. - No Calls To Action
I see it everyday, websites that make it impossible to find a way to contact the business. Contact info should be easy to find, usually located in the top right corner of the page. In addition you should have a call to action at the end of every page, and the bottom of every other blog post.
Following these simple steps and eliminating all these bad website design practices should get you up and running with a good converting website. Check back this week as I'll give you some ideas on how to create a rock solid website using WordPress.
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