You finally decided to take that leap and start your business. Or maybe it is just time to evolve and you want to rethink your approach to your current business (pandemics can do that). Either way your website is a great place to start. Websites are typically one of the first places people go to learn about a business. Yes, potential customers find businesses on social media and other places first sometimes and those are important, but you don’t 100% control them. You have to make your content fit into their parameters. A website is your blank canvas to do whatever you want. Besides visually matching your branding and your business personality, it should also make you think about what path you want your clients to go. What is your ultimate goal? How do different people get there? Using your website to think through the user flow is a part of that business plan. 

I recently had a conversation with a restaurant about ways to get people to order online during these uncertain times. Their normal channel for customers was not working since local office buildings in the area were closed and people are at home working. An idea was to offer full family-sized meals instead of their previous focus of customers coming into their restaurant for just one meal during the work day.  Thinking about the website first made them start to think about what exactly they should offer. Cooked meals or prepared meals? Both? What should that page look like versus the current page. Instead of a regular menu, we need to adjust to family style images. If they offer prepared meals, we need cooking instructions. If they provide cooked meals, we need to focus on the preparation process and highlight safety measures taken in the kitchen. In both cases, we need to include nutritional facts and serving sizes. It also made them think about what types of customers might use these services. Working moms are great because they like home cooked meals but are obviously short on time. What about childless couples? This group eats out more, but due to recent events they are back eating at home. This is a nice middle ground. A break from cooking but not exactly going out if they aren’t comfortable with that. 

Any answer to these doesn’t matter. The point is to ask yourself the questions. What customers are you going after and how will they find you? Once they find you, what is going to make them convert? Also, what is your definition of converting customers? We have done work for a few construction companies and since no one is buying construction on a website, their conversion was filling out a form. When a potential customer filled out a form on their website, this created a strong lead in their system. Maybe you are a content creator and your conversion is a follow or new subscriber. How does the website lead them down that path? Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Hopefully you are so passionate about your business that you understand how a customer thinks because you are one. How would you be converted? 

Once you have mapped out what it means to “convert” someone on the website (your blank canvas) it becomes so much easier to use this content everywhere else like social media, brochures, even business cards. What slogan might you use on your business cards, which colors do you like, and of course your logo. Again, the website is your blank canvas and now you can use parts to build out all the smaller pieces. 

We are passionate about the way technology and creativity fuse together to create an important part of business development and the customer journey. We would love to chat about your business and ways we could improve your customers’ experience while focusing on increasing your conversion rate. It octopis our thoughts! A little octopus humor to wrap this up. Thanks for reading and if you have any questions please drop us a note!