5 Key Questions You Must Ask Yourself About Your Website Audience

Build it and they will come? That’s not always the case with a website!

If you’re not getting the necessary traffic to visit and stay on your website – maybe it’s time to ask yourself 5 key questions:

1. Who Am I Targeting with My Website?

In our business, so many times we see websites that appear to be attempting to target multiple audiences: prospects, clients, employees and investors… Consequently it’s no wonder that it’s not answering any of them adequately enough.

You need to be focused on your number one audience and look to how your answer their specific needs. [These are called personas – it’s all part of agile project management]

On that basis what should your website include – and as crucially what should it not include? Maybe there could be an opportunity for culling under-performing pages?

2. Are My Audience Ready?

Gone are the days of people buying a product without doing any research beforehand. Whether you are buying a car or a coat, there is a wealth of information available online for consumers with guides and advice. It’s the same for your business. Your website is your shop window.

You need to consider the basics of the customer journey and the AIDA abbreviation:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

What stage will your web audience be at? What do you wish to tell them and how are you intending to move them towards the ultimate “Action”?

Just because you have lots to talk about, does not mean that your audiences see value in it, not right now! Maybe you hold back some content to then share with them as you form more of a relationship and can validate their needs as the engagement and interaction increases.

One tool we use here at Clever Marketing is a heat-map solution that enables us to measure the “hot pages” and from the results advise our customers on key changes that we recommend they make to their site.

3. But I Am Unique – Right?

Whatever your business you can be guaranteed that you will have competitors that offer clients similar products and services. You need to stand out from your competition, you need to be able to communicate to your audience why you care and what makes you special. Simon Sinek highlighted this some years ago with his “Start with why” video.

If you can spend time concisely considering not just what makes you special – but why they should care and then ensure that you effectively communicate this to your audience, you are on the right path.

4. Do I Walk the Talk?

Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. Do you phrase your website to answer their key concerns? Or are you just promoting your products hoping that they understand how the products will help them – a common situation that many companies have found themselves in large and small.

Often this is a basic judgement that just needs changing perspective. If you can identify the key pain points of your customers, and then consequently how your address these with your products you are halfway there. This will help you offer alternative ways of leading your prospects to find out information that is valid to them. It then can move the conversation from selling individual products to more of a consultative solution selling approach. Ultimately a more complex sale – but one that typically results in larger sales.

5. Do I Talk the Talk?

Following on from the structure of your website – you also need to consider your copy. In speech it is said that its not just “what you say” but “how you say it” that communicates to the recipient the tone and the ultimate meaning of what is being said. That is fairly straightforward when you are face-to-face with someone.

In copy it needs to be more explicit and your writing needs to convey knowledge and authority and a relevant tone to your business and your approach.

But in addition to this you must also take into consideration the keyword challenge! These are the words that that convey your knowledge and expertise to your audience. The skill is not just to ensure that your copy includes the words that your audience are looking for, but also that the tags and coding that are used to build the page use the same words. How skilled you are in doing this will affect your SEO – or search engine optimisation.

For those with a technical bent, there are some off the shelf solutions that can help assess your SEO and advise what to do.

What are the website next steps?

For those that have the time and the inclination none of the above questions are insurmountable, all it needs is time and resources. Here at Clever Marketing we have the knowledge and the skills in our team to help you rejuvenate your digital marketing, drive more sales and leads, and ultimately offer you a better return on investment.

If you’re still stuck, we’re more than happy to walk through your digital marketing strategy with you and ask those challenging questions that will result in a solution for you.

All you need to do now is call us on 01276 402 381 or fill in the simple form with your details and we will get back to you. (Calling is so much more friendly though, right?)