Whether you’ve followed With Grace and Gold for awhile, or you’ve recently discovered our small business, you may know we’re extremely passionate about web design — not just the visual elements that make up a website — but the measurable and immeasurable ways your website can work on behalf of your business.
Over these past 100+ episodes, we’ve shared a variety of ways your website can effectively lead and guide your visitors toward connecting with you and your business, and confidently choosing to work with you.
Today, we want to share 5 ways to elevate your visitors’ experience — 5 tools you can use and add to your website to ensure your visitors are receiving a great experience, forming a meaningful and lasting connection with your business, and ultimately, confidently choosing to purchase your products and book your services.
5 Ways to Elevate Your Website Visitors’ Experience.
At With Grace and Gold, we’ve long believed in the power of a well-designed, purpose-driven web design — a web design to effectively showcase your expertise, to seamlessly form connections with your visitors, and to equip your business for long-term growth and success.
When it comes to the web design process, there are, of course, foundational best practices to follow to ensure your website is user-friendly. But above and beyond those foundational best practices, how can you elevate your website visitors’ experience? Here are 5 ways, or 5 resources, we recommend adding to your website — along with why and how they’ll elevate your visitors’ experience. (Best of all, we’ve linked each of these resources in our Show Notes, so you can easily access any of the resources aligned with your vision and goals, too!)
- A Newsletter System like FloDesk: Building and growing a newsletter audience can serve as a meaningful way to market your small business. Think of your e-mail newsletter as a way to continue speaking to and serving the audience of people who visit your website. Your newsletter provides a way to be present in those visitors’ email inboxes and continue sharing about your products, your services, your approach, and more. Within our own business, we see newsletter marketing as valuable, because our newsletter audience is something we have a bit more ownership over, when compared to the ever-changing algorithms and expectations of each social media marketing platform. Choosing and creating a lead magnet to create value for your audience — something we discuss in Episode 016 — can help you to grow your newsletter audience with purpose…ensuring you’re speaking to the right people. A lead magnet is a value-adding offering — such as a downloadable PDF, access to something special like a Facebook group, a discount code for your products, etc. Statistically speaking pop-ups with lead magnets convert visitors better than pop-ups which simply say something like Subscribe, Join the List, or Receive Updates. Allow your lead magnet and your FloDesk newsletter pop-up to work on your behalf, connect with your audience, and help your audience to confidently become part of your newsletter community.
- A Video or Phone Call Scheduler like Schedulicity, Acuity, or Calendly: Offering a variety of ways to contact your small business lowers barriers for your prospective clients. Some prospective clients strongly prefer email, while other prospective clients strongly prefer a phone call or video call. Being accessible and accommodating to prospective clients’ various preferred communication styles can be helpful for better serving your prospective clients — and more effectively converting your visitors toward becoming paying clients. Phone or video call schedulers like Schedulicity, Acuity, or Calendly can equip you to seamlessly schedule phone or video calls with prospective clients. These resources offer ways to embed a calendar or link to your calendar from your website — making the scheduling process quick and user-friendly. From a business standpoint, this is helpful because you can set your schedule, maintain your boundaries, and create a smooth experience for visitors who would like to schedule a phone or video call with you.
- A Live Chat System like Freshdesk, Drift, Intercom, or Podium. A live chat system is a great resource for answering quick questions from prospective clients or website visitors. Certain chat systems even allow you to determine your available hours, so you can manage your live chat within your existing business hours.
- A Third-Party Contact Form like Honeybook, Dubsado, or 17Hats. If you use a project management system for your business, like Honeybook, Dubsado, or 17Hats, you may know that each of these project management systems offers a contact form you can embed within your website. Using one of these third-party contact forms — a contact form connected with your project management system — can create a smooth and more seamless process for prospective clients who inquire with you. Many of these types of project management systems allow you to create workflows, with could include auto-responders for those who inquire. Maybe, when someone inquires with you, you’d like for an automated confirmation email to be sent their way. Or maybe, when someone inquires with you, you’d like for an automated email to provide your pricing guide or a link to a hidden pricing page within your website. Using a third-party contact form can elevate your client experience and work on your behalf, even when you’re not working.
- Broken Link Checker Plugin for WordPress. If you’re a WordPress user, we recommend using a plugin called Broken Link Checker, which scans both internal and external links on your website for any broken links. Fixing broken links not only helps your users to have a more positive and user-friendly experience — ensuring every click they make leads them to the appropriate place — but fixing broken links also helps your Search Engine Optimization. A big component of creating a user-friendly experience is ensuring every detail of your website is working seamlessly — so a Broken Link Checker plugin can make a big difference!
As a reminder, each of the resources we’ve discussed today have been linked in our Show Notes. We are so hopeful these resources will enhance your website and help you to create a well-rounded, connection-focused experience for your website’s visitors, too.
Lastly, we want to share an exciting announcement: The Brand It, Build It Podcast is now seeking guests! Though our podcast began as a solo podcast, we’re looking forward to welcoming diverse small business owners to our podcast in the season ahead. To apply to be interviewed, or to nominate someone to be interviewed, please visit our Podcast page!
About Brand It, Build It Podcast, Hosted by Kelly Zugay
Hosted by Kelly Zugay, co-founder of With Grace and Gold, The Brand It, Build It Podcast is a leading small business marketing podcast for small business owners, creatives, founders and entrepreneurs. Enjoy weekly, actionable episodes to build a successful, sustainable small business from the inside out.
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