The 2 Most Important Things Your Website Needs To Do

While many of you may still have some time on your hands right now given the current circumstances, why not use this opportunity to fine tune your website a bit. There are a lot of things to consider and changes that can be made; heaven knows you can spend hours just deciding on what photos to put where, let alone the other thousand things to be worked out, but there are two primary things that your website must deliver. No matter how nice it looks or what special things you’ve got here and there on your site, if these two factors aren’t front and center of everything you do, none of it will matter. 

First, your site has to answer their questions 

Anytime someone comes upon your website, they have questions. It’s up to you to ensure that every single one of those possible questions is answered on your site. And I’m not just referring to a FAQ page, somewhere that you literally list out common questions and answers; although those are obviously helpful for some aspects. What I’m referring to are the sometimes-unspoken questions of… 

What do you do? 

Who do you help? 

How do you help? 

Why do I need this? 
What problem do you solve? 

How do you know what you know? 

What puts you above the rest of the people offering the same thing? 

Why should I trust you? 

Then there’s the more overt questions… 

What are your prices? 
What are your hours? 
Do I need an appointment? 
How far are you booked out? 

What types of massage do you offer? 
What’s the difference in all of them? 

Answer these questions! 

Secondly, your site has to be easy to use 

It’s known as an intuitive design, and while it may be a simple concept, it’s something that a considerable amount of thought needs to go into. The way someone traverses your website, the pages and links they click, the natural progression they go through, should all be organized in such a way that it seems effortless. If it’s not, if a link doesn’t work, it’s hard to find certain pages to answer certain questions, or they feel like they’re going to have to search through a lot of nonsense to find what they need, they’ll more than likely click away. Or at the very least, you’ve made a not-so-great first impression.  

The biggest struggle for many, especially if you’re DIY-ing the whole thing and you’re not a web developer or designer, is that you’re looking at things from your own point of view. But you’re too close to it, and you’re too “in the know” to really see how things need to be. The key is to look at and navigate the site like a potential client would. Once you can see it from their perspective it becomes much clearer as to what needs to be where, and how you can make the entire experience of using your website easy and intuitive. Consider recruiting a friend or family member to work through your site as a client would – even give them an objective like finding a certain service and booking an appointment, and see how long it takes them to do so, and if they run into any trouble finding the way. 

Take a little extra time right now to spiff up your website, but go beyond just making it pretty. These two things can overcome any aesthetic misstep, ensuring more website visitors become paying clients.