Put Your Website Center Stage: 5 Steps to Increase Credibility and Engagement

No matter where customers start their product or service search—online or off—they will almost always be driven to your website for more information at some point in the process. If you’re doing any amount of online marketing, customers will likely:

1. Conduct an online search on their preferred search engine and land on your website via organic and paid search results
2. Be driven to your website through the efforts of content marketing campaigns (case studies, brochures, articles, white papers, press releases, infographics, videos)

Are your landing pages telling your story in an interesting way to capture and hold your users’ attention?

When someone enters your website, you have just 10 seconds to clearly communicate your value before they chooses to engage or walk away. Here are five steps you can take to ensure your website earns instant credibility to increase engagement.

Understand your audience.

It is imperative to remain consistent with your brand message on every web page (you never know which page potential customers will land on) and demonstrate why your users should buy your product or service. Delivering unique personalized headlines will instantly help your audience relate and engage.

Support content marketing with great UX.

You should always present your content and navigation in a hierarchical fashion based on your business goals and audience needs. You also have the ability to ensure ease of use by remaining consistent with your brand and following UX best practices, helping users find the content they need.

Ensure cross-device responsiveness.

Websites today must be device agnostic to enable engagement and reduce drop off rates on all platforms. More than ever, people have developed a set of expectations on how your site should respond on desktop, phone or tablet. Forrester reported that 87% of firms are investing in responsive design in 2016 compared to only 66% a year earlier.

Invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and paid search.

72% of product research for a future business purchase begins on Google. Being in the top three organic listings on Google and Bing is one of the most effective tools in generating leads and credibility. A well-crafted SEO strategy combined with pay-per-click advertising will help you get to the top of the search results and stay there. If you make the investment in online marketing, be sure your website’s landing pages are designed to educate, encourage purchase or capture leads depending on your marketing goals. Your sales team will appreciate the influx of qualified leads.

Share the investment between marketing, sales and IT.

Content marketing is on the rise, creating more competition and demanding the attention of all parties. Your content must cut through the clutter to gain attention and educate your audience. Think about how you can integrate your content marketing efforts with your website, branding and other strategies to get more bang for your buck. Bringing in qualified leads can require a healthy budget, so marketing, sales and IT should converge to advance your website and technology to fill the funnel with prospects.

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