5 Ways to Use Your Website to Stop Missing Out on Clients

When was the last time you stood waiting in line without pulling out your phone to scroll Facebook, or for me, swipe a quick PokeStop? Or, if you’re anything like me or Monica, when was the last time you sat on the toilet without scrolling through Instagram reels (and spanning your significant other with the best ones)?

The fact of the matter is, that people have busy lives and the average attention span isn’t very long. For business owners, it means you get to exercise that creativity muscle in your brain to figure out how to captivate your website visitors. If you don’t put enough thought or strategy into it, people will hop off your website just as fast as they hopped on. This means fewer eyes on your amazing services, which leads to fewer paying clients and more sadness for you. 

According to Go Rocket Fuel, the average website bounce rate (percentage of website visitors that leave the site after visiting only one page) is 49%. In other words, nearly half of all websites don’t interest or captivate their visitors enough to navigate to a second page! Hopefully, that’s not your website 😱 There could be a couple of different reasons for such a high bounce rate. The most common are:

• It’s not the content they wanted or needed
• They didn’t find that they were looking for
• The website was confusing  

On average, you have about 7-10 seconds to grab the attention of a visitor and get them to be interested in learning more before they leave your website. And although there’s no “right” way to captivate your clients (remember, stretch that creativity muscle of yours), there are some best practices to keep in mind. I promise you that if you put these next 5 steps into action (if you haven’t done so already), you’ll see an increase in your website retention rates and a boost in your inquiries. 

5 things your website needs to grab readers’ attention

1. Make it skimmable

You might have heard this one before, but people don’t read websites, they skim websites. Think about it… when you look up a restaurant website to see their menu, do you read every word? Heavens no! You skim, looking for the info you need or want. Here are a couple of practical ways to do that: 

• Use bullet points. I’m a big bullet point fan (can’t you tell?). Bullet points make it easy to skim content and see things at a glance. 

• Use pull quotes on testimonials. Instead of leaving a big chunk of text from a past client talking about how great you are, pull out the best sentence and make it bold, make it a different color, or make it much larger than the rest. 

2. Make it EASY to work with you

People shouldn’t have to burn extra mental calories trying to figure out how to book a call with you or use their extra brainpower to interpret your process. It should be EASY to work with you and navigate your website, and you should be telling them just how easy it is. (you could literally say “working with me is easy”). Here are some other ideas:

Make a 3 Step Plan

Make a 3 step plan. I know there are likely going to be more than 3 steps in your workflow, but let’s break it down into 3-4 steps so your clients can visually see how easy it will be to work with you.

Use Simple Forms

Sometimes on our website contact forms, we feel like we need to gather all the information we can about that person right off the bat. Nope. That’s not easy for our clients. Instead, only ask for the few pieces of information you really need (usually it can be as simple as their name, email, what service they’re interested in, and a general message space). Once they reach out to you, there will be time to gather the other information you need later in the sales funnel. 

Make it EASY for Visitors to Take Action

If you want them to schedule an appointment, display the “schedule” button loud and proud on the home page! Whatever first step you want them to take, don’t hide it. Make it easy! 

3. Observe common eye-tracking patterns

There are several studies that look into where website visitors’ eyes land and scan when they look over a website. There are a few different models and patterns, but two are the most common: the F-shaped pattern and the Z-shaped pattern.

In either case, one thing is common: readers will first scan the top of your website, from left to right before they notice anything else. This means that area is prime real estate! So, logically, you’ll want to place your most important call to action button here, inviting your visitors to do something. (like book a call).

4. Your Hero Section

The top section of your website that visitors see when they first land on your website, before starting to scroll is called the hero section. This section needs to be very clear and straightforward. You want website visitors to immediately know 3 things about you:

• Who you serve. Is this website even for them? If you serve dog owners in Oregon, then cat owners in Idaho know you’re not for them.
• What you do or what your services are. If they’re looking for a dog sitter but you only offer dog walking, they know they’re in the wrong place!
• How they can work with you?. For the people that stay (the Oregon dog owners who want Scruffy walked), they need an easy way to take the next step. They’re now saying “yup, this service provider is for me! How do I get started?”

5. Speak to their Pain Points

It’s true when they say “people don’t buy products, they buy solutions”. It might sound hurtful, but people don’t care about how long you’ve been in business, or how great your process is, or quite frankly how many years of experience you have. What people really want to know is: can you solve my problem?

The best way to communicate that you can solve their problem is to let them know you understand what their problem is. Pretty early on in your website you want to talk about your client’s pain points, the problems they are facing, and empathize with them. Tell them you understand their struggle or difficulty, then you can propose your solution to the problem. 

So there you have it, 5 ways you can grab your readers’ attention with your content and keep visitors on your website longer. If you want to see all 5 of these strategies in action, check out our website homepage. 

Words of Encouragement

Now you might be feeling a little bit discouraged at this point. If you’re not, awesome! Go and put these things into practice! But if you are, keep this quote in mind: 

“It’s never too late to be what you might have been”

– George Elliot

You may feel late to the website party, but it’s actually never too late. Just as more and more people are creating websites and implementing great strategies into them, even more people are going online to find products AND services. 

Don’t be discouraged…recent studies show that 30% of people choose products or services because of a preferred website. (30% is pretty good considering only 36% of people say they base their purchasing decisions on pricing!) A whopping 58.4% of consumers purchase a product or service online each week.

Our Process

Monica and I know the importance of implementing strategy into your website. Great design is important, but it’s not enough. That’s why when we start a project with a client, we spend an entire hour on a strategy call with them going over their goals for the website, their intended audience, and more to make sure their website is saying just the right things in just the right ways! 

If you liked these tips and want more, make sure to download our FREE guide, 5 Ways to Level-Up Your Website. It’s packed with more great tips just like these that you are sure to enjoy!