Building a new website for a Local Business? Here’s what do you need to factor in.

If you want your users to love it, and Google to love it.. then take time to research and build strategy before your build.

Content strategy should be the voice of strategy.

and this will set a strong foundation for building your site.

What are you trying to accomplish?

A consultant who gets business from their a referral network, through speaking gigs etc, might just need a simple landing page as a website.

A local business on the other hand, who want to rank for certain keywords, should have a content strategy in place.

Local Website Best Practises

The team over in Duct Tape Marketing are the masters are everything local-business website related and share some really great website best practises.

So, what do you need?

Most service businesses need most, if not all of these elements below:

  1. Keyword Research
  2. Content Strategy
    1. Write out your story (and then record it)
    2. Create videos – video is a must
    3. Create content for the buyer journey

      1.  Establish -> Know -> Like -> Trust -> Try -> Buy -> Repeat -> Refer

  3. Website structure
    1. Title tags,  meta, alt tags
    2. 6 page structure – home, service 1, service 2, service 3, about us, contact. (blog/reviews)
    3. Footer links and NAP
    4. Local Schema markup
  4. Value proposition
    1. Problem you solve
    2. Show the value you create
  5. Design
    1. Flow – it’s got to be conversational
    2. User experience – employ heat maps to test where users are looking
    3. Kill the sliders. Sliders are out of fashion.
    4. Aesthetics. White space is back. Long homepages are back
  6. Conversions Principles
    1. Think User Experience (UX)
    2. Start with a promise to solve a problem.
    3. Strong Call to Actions
    4. Social proof – have your reviews visible
  7. Website Psychology
    1. Be YOU focussed
    2. Congruency of your message
      1. easy to comprehend
      2. specifically
    3. First scroll mentality (Earn the scroll, keep users engaged and wanting more)
    4. Customer reviews
  8. Local Content
    1. Local Landing pages
    2. Local Map
    3. Link out to GMB

And of course the must have Non-Negotiables

  1. Speed
  2. Mobile first
  3. HTTPS
  4. Enough Relevant Content – visuals, images, video to tell the story
  5. Google My Business-

Google My business

Homepage First Scroll – (aka main image / hero image)

Remember, the Homepage is your key first impression

Can you articulate exactly what you do, and how you solve their problem with the first hero image?

Can you build Trust, provide Security, and keep them engaged to earn more scroll.

A great example from Neil Patel.

“Make Your westside better. Instantly”

“Do you want more traffic, leads, and sales? Enter your URL below if you want to grow your traffic and revenue.”

3 big questions you need to answer

  1. What is the problem you solve
  2. What is your solution
  3. Who for? Target market

A. The Customer Journey

Focus on the customer journey and the seven stages: know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat and refer. If you think about that journey and the fact that the buyers control that journey has a lot to of with the fact that most websites, modern websites today, are these long scrolling home pages.

B. Be you focussed

Too much me me me is a problem

We’re wasting that opportunity to demonstrate that we understand the customers deepest problem

C. First fold focus

Can you give peace of mind – immediately.

It also sends a very strong message, we’re somebody you can trust.

Establish trust and credibility.

Here is how we help, meet our friendly team, read some reviews

Great Example: plumbing contractor

They’ve put together a dispatching system that lets people know exactly when they’re on their way and who’s coming and who’s what they look like. This really to me, this taps into home services industry as a whole, one of the biggest challenges is, when will they show up? Will they be on time? Who is it? Will I recognizes them? Is this going to be a scary experience to let somebody into my house? That’s actually a big problem in that entire category of business. So, I think this is a brilliant way for this plumbing contractor to stand out in their town or their community by focusing on that problem and not; we fix pipes, we fix toilets, we’re the number one rated, blah, blah, blah that everybody says when they’re ready to buy.

Use Simple Language

It’s all coming back to simple, easy to understand language.

Marketing language and words are having less impact.

..and it’s got to be conversational. Easy to understand and specific.

The claims you make about yourself

.. should be qualitative and quantitative.

You don’t optimise webpages.. you optimise the thought process inside the mind of the customer

Don’t say “we are high integrity”, we’ve been in business 25 years implies. What else implies trust worthiness without saying it.

Let other people make the qualitative claims. You make the quantitative claims. So you need quotes from customer. Screenshots of you in the news. Awards your company has won.