When it comes to building the website you need to attract and convert customers, having an inbound marketing consultant on board is essential for success. Many business owners hire a web designer or developer to create a new website, but they often neglect to incorporate key marketing elements or back-end SEO in their plan. This results in a website that looks great but isn’t going to help you get found on Google. Or isn’t going to help you convert any leads. Web designers typically focus on how the site looks and functions but can miss things like conversion opportunities, keyword optimization, back-end on-page SEO elements, and more.
In today’s digitally-driven and highly competitive world of business, it’s not difficult to understand that a strong web presence is paramount for success. But good web design for businesses in competitive markets consists of much more than just impressive imagery or animations. It also goes beyond product quality, because even the best product or service will fail to sell if it can’t land an audience. Smart design today is about creating sites that are optimized at every angle to help your business maximize its presence in search and convert visitors into paying customers. This is exactly where inbound smarts prove their worth.
Are you launching a new website, tweaking a pre-existing one, or contributing to a web launch for another business? You need an inbound marketing consultant to help make it happen - and here are four simple reasons why.
1. VISITOR EXPERIENCE
An inbound marketing consultant will help you develop an inbound website: in short, a site that revolves entirely around the experience of the visitor and their unique buyer’s journey.
Developing an inbound website goes far beyond clever design. While aesthetics and site design are undoubtedly important for brand recognition and visual appeal, good design alone is an empty experience for the user if it doesn’t leverage critical elements for customer accessibility and personalization. What’s more, if a website design is confusing, distracting, or overcrowded with content and imagery, it is far more likely to turn away potential customers rather than draw them in.
For example, a web designer or developer may incorporate a cool interactive hero background video that looks amazing, but seriously slows down the website speed. These days, users won't wait around more than a second or two for a site to load.
Another example: an inbound marketer will review your website analytics to identify which pages people are looking for and spending the most time on. This content will be easy to find, whereas a designer or developer may not put emphasis on the accessibility of these pages.
When it comes to converting your website visitors into paying customers, the design should forefront every element that can assist you in generating leads. An inbound marketing consultant can help you develop robust buyer personas and integrate those ideal customers - and more importantly, their ideal buying experience - right into your website’s functionalities.
2. CONVERSION OPPORTUNITIES
First, let’s review: what is a conversion opportunity?
A conversion opportunity results from identifying what your visitor’s needs or pain points are and offering valuable content in exchange for their email address (usually via a call-to-action and form).
For example, a user may be spending time on your blog posts. An inbound marketer knows that this is a key opportunity to capture the visitor’s email address and might present a pop-up that reads “Don’t have time to read these helpful articles? We’ll email them to you to read later!”.
Or someone who has spent a lot of time on your shop page researching pricing might be presented with a special discount code toward their first purchase in exchange for their email.
Ultimately, an inbound marketing consultant knows exactly what the visitor needs and showcases a attractive offer at the right time. A web designer or developer may not have this knowledge.
If a website is not designed to leverage CTA’s, pop-ups, or other relevant conversion tools, it’s going to prove difficult to get the information you need to draw potential buyers along a sales funnel. Conversely, a website that has been optimized for conversion from the ground-up is a powerful engine for capturing leads - and eventually, turning those leads into customers.
3. OPTIMIZED SEO
While a confusing website is a turn-off, a website that doesn’t show up in search at all is useless. To get the search engine results you need to drive growth, an inbound marketing consultant helps identify the right keywords to target for your ideal audience, ensure those keywords are placed strategically in the right spots across your site, and optimize on-page SEO elements like URL structure, page titles, meta descriptions, and header tags.
4. EFFECTIVE COPY
Whether you write your website content yourself or leave it to a copywriter or marketer, your website copy is arguable more important than the design. By collecting valuable information from leads, an inbound marketing consultant will also help you align your content strategy with your buyer’s pain points and the typical journey they take to find new vendors or solution. Website copy must be user-focused and address your visitor’s pain points. An effective inbound strategy will help you build a website experience tailored to the customer you want by anticipating their unique needs and what they are most likely to respond to.
No business owner wants a website that simply exists lifelessly and disappears in search results. A good website should be like an employee that works for you 24 hours a day, interacting with your customers in the same personalized and helpful way you’d expect any other employee to. Hire an inbound marketing consultant for your web project team and watch your site begin to capture leads and ultimately drive your profits.
Need inbound smarts on your team? Book a free consultation today!
