- Site purpose
Key to any site design is in what purpose it serves: lead generation, acting as a leaflet, means to continuing communication with the present customer base or a combination of them. Before hiring a website designer, check few websites in each of those categories and see what works for you and for your customers. Look at the primary financial brands, big and smaller banks, mortgage broker, leading agents and your co-workers. It’s very likely that they already spent plenty of cash in website design and study, so you don’t actually have to start from the scratch.
- Build Trust
It’s likely that your website will be used by your potential client merely to assess who you are in the process of building their trust in you. We often see sites with plenty of irrelevant ‘blob’ but nothing regarding the agent and why are they trusted. Begin with your own team photographs, logo design, qualifications, accreditations, privacy policy, details of your physical location and social networking links. Add a few testimonials and explain how you do business and why they should work with you.
If you’re specialising in delivering solutions to certain professions or businesses — convince them that you understand enough about their business. You may want to display your cell number somewhere on your website, however a 1300 number should be clearly visible on your front page and elsewhere. 1300 number will cost you $5-$10 a month and will make your company look somewhat more respectful.
- Use Media
Most people will spend very short time on your website — so you’ll have to get their attention quickly or communicate your message in the easiest possible way. An example is the use of infographics to visually tell your story in three seconds. You can add a brief movie (1-2 minutes) describing your model and advantages of using your organisation. If you do not use a picture designer, canva.com is a fantastic site that will help you design your infographic.
If you have to use images, browse stock photo sites and buy what only you require. However, adding a lot of stock pictures will make your website seem generic and unoriginal. Important information has to be on top of your page — many users will rarely scroll down the page. Ensure that you have a call to action visible, as your prospective customer might leave before they could shoot you a fast question or telephone your 1300 number.
- Build Quality Content
The days of ‘cheap’ SEO are long gone. Nowadays website owners are likely better off paying for the front-page positioning on Google or advertisements through other important websites. Simply speaking, Google frequently adjusts its algorithms to avoid any non-organic (ie fake) look in their search engine. They however still rank decent content and naturally attractive websites. While that does not mean that you will appear higher in common search phrases compared to the ‘professional’ traffic generation websites, it still makes sense to maintain your site relevant in time, notify your customers and assure your prospective clients that you ‘know your stuff’. Speed updates, regular and authentic blog articles, short videos or podcasts are simply some ways to raise your content. To easily post content and website updates pick a website platform that’s easy to manage. Most companies will be best satisfied with a habit or ‘off the shelf’ WordPress template. The majority of them are now fully responsive, making it effortless to read content on any device including a mobile phone.
- Understand Effect of Colours
Colours used in a site (and your branding) will play an essential role in aligning your clients with your organisation. Colours play a huge role in persuasion and significantly improve website conversion.
If you’re advertising, you will want dedicated landing pages, often intended for different groups of AdWords or sites you’re advertising on. Using your main page can do the job as well, however conversion rates may be lower. You can even buy committed URLs for the keywords you’re targeting in your advertisements and use these just for the look of your adverts — in which that address will redirect to your main URL landing page. This will make your advertisements more relevant and consequently you will lower your advertising cost to some degree. By way of instance, if you want to market for term “Marketing Tips for Mortgage Brokers” or similar, you can buy a similar domain and divert that it to your landing page relevant to mortgage brokers. Layout of your landing pages is dependent on what you’re trying to accomplish, and typically the best thing you can get is possible client’s name, telephone and email address.
