Your website is your storefront, a digital home for your business. It should put your business’s best foot forward because for many of your customers, this will be the very first place they encounter your brand. Users are inundated with information and they can literally leave your site with a click of a button to find one with the same information, but is easier to navigate, more intuitive, and has a better overall user experience. They ‘click’ for the information, but they stay for the experience. 😉
Basically, anything big or small in your website that is not user-friendly will push away prospective clients so we’re sharing our 5 tips for a user-friendly website below!
1. Update your site regularly
No matter what type of wedding vendor you are, your online presence could always benefit from showing new work. Your work always gets better with time so show it! 😉 Make updating your website a regular, recurring task. Sometimes, in the busyness of actually working in your business, things like updating your website gets put on the back burner. But if your website shows old work, not only will you find it more difficult to attract new clients, it also shows an inaccurate portrait of your business. As you and your business grows, your website should grow with it.
2. Test any forms
It seems like almost all wedding vendors have some kind of form on their website. Forms are easy-to-use for both vendors and clients and they are great – we love using our online form! But, we all know that technology is finicky and sometimes glitches can go undetected. One thing that we like to do periodically is test out our form. Save yourself from a potentially devastating situation and test your form if you haven’t been getting any inquiries for an extended amount of time! It is so easy for a form error to go unnoticed so be proactive about your form maintenance.
3. Categorize your blog posts
If you blog regularly, categorize your posts! Readers may search your archives by date but that can be frustrating if they are looking for something specific, especially if you write about many different topics! Categorizing your blog posts leads readers straight into the content they want and gives readers a smooth reading process. Don’t leave any posts as ‘Uncategorized’ because you begin to lose trust with your reader. How can they be sure they are getting an accurate representation of your blog posts if half or most of your posts are labeled ‘Uncategorized’? Make as many categories as you need, categorize posts into multiple categories, do whatever you need to organize your blog. A few extra seconds categorizing each blog post before hitting publish can make all the difference in enhancing your readers’ experience.
4. Lead your readers
When potential clients navigate your site, you want to lead them on a journey. Sure some users will click around or jump straight to the good stuff but if you’re a vendor providing something that requires “an investment” then your readers will most likely want to do as much research as they can on you before booking. If your site has a menu, organize the links in order of how you want them to travel the site. Our site starts with our Home page then About followed by our Services then our Contact page then our Blog. Our blog isn’t necessary for the booking process so it is at the end and we want readers to get to know us and our services before inquiring so they are at the beginning.
5. Place media purposefully
Photos and videos can enhance your readers’ site experience so much, if used purposefully. Placing photos and videos near the top of your webpages is something commonplace on the internet that it is almost expected. When is the last time you’ve visited a webpage with just text at the top? Place any photos and videos at the top of the screen, if you can. If they are off to the side or at the bottom they are likely to be overlooked. Additionally, turn autoplay off! There is nothing more frustrating that an ambient voice or advertisement speaking to you and you can’t find the source. Users would much rather leave the page altogether than search for the video and pause it.
We are avid internet users and if all websites and blogs used these guidelines, we’d be more likely to stay on them! We hope you found this helpful because using these 5 website tips will greatly improve your website quality.
If you have any additional questions or want to request a topic for BBE Teaches, email us at basicbash@gmail.com! Happy Monday!
Machelle says
Love the tips Kayla! Thinking I should evaluate my site after reading through this.
Sonja says
Great tips for anyone with a business website! Goes for photographers, too! Thanks for sharing, and happy spring!
David Abel says
These were great tips, especially since I just launched my site today! I’ll have to go and re test my forms now!
Kelly says
These are fantastic tips! Such a good reminder!
Kelli says
Love this! Great tips!