I often find myself explaining to contractors during sales calls what the bare bones minimum they should have when it comes to their website.
Sure, many want all the bells and whistles, but they cost, and with so many people having champagne taste and beer money, I thought it would be a good idea to give you a quick and dirty post on what you NEED to have, versus what you want to have.
Minimum Setup for Your Site
Home Page – Obviously your site needs a primary landing page where most of your referral traffic and traffic from offline advertising will find themselves. This page isn’t meant to sell, it is meant to lead people into your sales funnel. Highlights and a 20,000 foot view of your business, products and services are what are called for here.
About us – The about us page is where you want to talk about you, your business, your people, the company. Mix in a few confidence builders on this page as well. Years in business, associations you or the company belongs to, awards. All things that make people feel good about doing business with you.
Gallery Page – This is where a picture is worth a thousand words. Understand, people read differently than you, and having plenty of images of your completed work here will help you sell more than any words you can put on the rest of the pages…its called imagery and taking ownership.
Contact Us Page – The name pretty much says it all. This is where you want to put as many ways for someone to reach you with one caveat…list as few phone numbers as possible. DON’T list office, cell, home, pay phone…you get my point. Make it easy for people and give them only one number to reach you, whichever it is that you always have with you. Usually a cell, but you can forward numbers too. Check out this post on Grasshopper if you need a solution. Finally, DON’T put an address down if you don’t want people showing up at your house or if your business is not setup to accept walk-in traffic.
Product/Services Page – This is where you talk about the work that you do. This page is where you get down to brass tacks and really lay out there. Make this page keyword rich for both the jobs you do and the areas you do them in. If you have many business lines in your business (i.e., a plumber may clear clogged drains, finish bathrooms and provide 24 hour emergency service) and all of these services SHOULD get their own pages on your site. Why? Because like I have told you many times, Google ranks pages, not sites, so while your homepage may not rank well for a particular keyword in Google, a secondary page just might!
So that’s it. A good start. Sure there can be many more pages showcasing your work or talking about your business but this is what is REQUIRED in 2012. One more thing, have some type of contact form on each and every page because you don’t know what is going to move someone to want to reach out and touch you…anyone remember that tagline?
