As a consultant, your success often relies on conveying to others why you are an expert and how you can deliver them "real results." If your audience finds you first through your website, ensuring their very first impression is a positive one is essential.
A well-designed website will encourage confidence and trust in your services– two factors that turn viewers into leads. A mediocre website can undermine your credibility and create doubt and unease.
Unlike a retailer's website, a consultant's site sells skills, strategy, solutions, and experience, not products. With hundreds of competitors showing up on the same search engine results page (SERPs), highlighting your knowledge and creating a website designed to convert viewers is essential.
Building your very own high-quality consulting business website doesn't take rocket science. After all, you only need to ensure your audience can be easily directed and guided to your preferred call to action. To learn how to do this with your audience and website, keep reading…
Include An Obvious Contact Button
Optimize For Search Engines - Not Yourself
Many consultants forget the importance of web design when it comes to creating a consulting business website. Over 70% of link search users click on organic results, meaning it's essential to ensure your audience stays on your website once they can find it.
If you have a poorly designed website that's hard to use or takes too long to load, your consumers will leave. When search engines pick up on your high bounce rate, they drop your rankings in the search engine results accordingly.
Here are a few ways you can improve your SEO by improving your web design:
Create a more mobile-friendly design with larger buttons and easy navigation
Remove unnecessary paragraphs and focus on creating a scannable website
Include keywords and descriptors in your image names and alt tags that give Google an idea of what is featured in the image
Only include 1 - 2 call-to-actions per page and change your buttons to red or orange
Highlight Your Value with Case Studies
The goal of a website is to have your client not be able to leave without making a sale, booking a call, or any other action in between. One of the best ways to do this is by helping them envision how you can help solve their pain point. An analytical and results-focused case study will walk prospective clients through the experience of successfully completing a project with you. It will help leads wrap their head around your process and show the exact type of results they can expect.
A case study is a document or video that tells the story of your client's issue, how you approached solving said issue, and the results of your partnership. Click here to see an example of one of our own case studies.
A good case study should clearly highlight the two most important tokens a potential lead is looking for: How you solved the issue and what the results were. Because of this, make sure you create a document that will be easily scannable and highlight the information your audience is looking for.
Eliminate Jargon and Buzzwords
Consultants often include buzzwords such as "action-plan" or "omnichannel," and while you may assume these words make you look smarter - your audience disagrees. When you use these phrases, you risk not only boring your current and future web users but also derailing your efforts to distinguish your small business from its competitors.
Instead of focusing on impressing your audience, educate them. For example, why tell someone that you're a "well-qualified expert" if you can specify that you're a certified HR Strategy Consultant who's been in business for 20 years?
Here are a few other tips to help improve your consulting business website copy:
Choose words that add meaning to your story and website
Provide specific details as to why you're a trusted source
Avoid industry lingo and words
Focus on solving your user's pain points
Create A Visual Hierarchy with Headlines
Look at your website analytics, and you'll be surprised to see how little time users spend on your website. But don't worry, that's completely normal! According to Klipfolio, the average user spends less than one minute on each webpage they visit.
To ensure you are giving your audience the exact information you need in such a short time, creating a visual hierarchy with your headers is an excellent hack to improve your scanability.
Instead of creating long descriptive paragraphs and bodies to explain your consulting services, bio, or other information; create bold and articulate headers that lead your user to a specific page with more information. This way, your audience can quickly scan and scroll down your website while simultaneously absorbing all the information they need.
Headlines aren't only good for grabbing your user's attention though; it's also necessary to be seen by Google.
Computer scanners understand a different language than we do, so to compile all that information in the easiest way possible, search engine bots scan your headers to understand the basic information on your page. H1, the biggest headers, represent the most important idea on the page, and sub-sections organized with H2, or more minor level headings, are secondary.
Optimizing your headings not only helps your human user's understand the benefits of your service, but search engine bots as well.
Include An Obvious Contact Button
A new term is being thrown around the web design and UX (user-experience) industries called "Click-to-call." On average, roughly 75% of users prefer to navigate a website on their cell phone over a desktop. To compensate and update web design to meet the needs of mobile-first shoppers, web designers invented a new type of contact button...
Click-to-call.
When someone wants to book a consultation or speak with you about your services, they simply click or call a button that transports them directly to your phone, email, or calendly.
Although this may seem like an arbitrary part of your website to change, Click call is crucial because it makes it easier for your customers to reach you. This ease of access could help you convert customers or provide better customer service. A click-to-call button also reduces any extra effort the user would have to expend to connect with you.
Key Takeaways
The first impression your consulting business will make is important, so make sure your website is appropriately building your case as the passionate, results-oriented expert you are. By making these small changes, you can improve your user's experience on your website resulting in a higher chance for conversions.
If you need help creating a consulting website that aligns with your goals and timeline, give us a call and have your website up in as little as 48 hours! Creating the perfect user-friendly and high-quality consulting website of your dreams doesn't have to take months.