Your website is your brand’s digital face. You want to ensure your personality as a company shows and the site is functional. However, does the site truly focus on your target audience? What elements speak to the buyer personas you serve?

According to the United States Small Business Administration, there are approximately 32.5 million small businesses, making up 99.9% of all companies in the country. Every element of your online presence must be on-point if you wish to compete with the many other firms out there.

What should your site include if you want to reach your target audience? Not everything is equal when it comes to creating a business site. Here are the top elements you should focus on to ensure your website pulls users in and keeps them engaged.

1. Know Your Own Identity

You can dig into the data and figure out who your target audience is, but you must also brand your business throughout your website. Your goals should align with highly qualified leads. Include information users most want to know about your brand, such as your experience and guarantees.

The best business sites keep their brand personality while also speaking directly to their target audience. You must balance who you are as a brand and who your customers want you to be for true long-term success.

Meadlight offers a fermented honey drink. The brand has neutral colors with a pop of honey yellow. Note how they put the product in a location that makes it stand out for the audience. They also engage the user by having a dot of yellow move across the screen as the person moves their cursor.

2. Integrate Marketing

Bring all departments together when designing your site, so users get a consistent experience. Make sure marketing keeps design informed and vice versa. If your promotional team lists a special, it should appear the minute the user clicks on a link and traverses to your website.

The look, language and offers should all align for a cohesive experience. Your target audience shouldn’t have to hunt for the deal initially driving them to your site.

3. List Industries Served

Want to cut to the chase and let users know if you can help them and meet their needs? Identify the industries you serve and list them on your home page. People can easily see what your speciality is and if you’re a good match.

Illuminated Integration shows the most common types of businesses they serve. They use an icon for the industry and then use a subtitle under to indicate the places they’ve worked for, such as schools, museums, churches and theaters.

The list isn’t meant to limit them, as they are capable of working in other areas, but it shows their expertise to someone on the fence about hiring their services.

4. Audit Your Content

Does your content meet the needs of your audience? When people land on your page, is there enough to inform and engage them? Spend time going through old blog posts. Get rid of anything not applicable to your users.

Know your customer pain points. Does your content answer those problems and provide possible solutions? The more detailed your advice, the more your clients feel understood and engaged.

5. Show the Benefits

List advantages from the viewpoint of the customer. Your target audience wants to know what your product or service does for them. You can likely list the pros of your company and maybe even your unique value proposition.

You must go a step further and explain the benefits as they apply to your user. Some of the features may coincide with your competitors. Dig into the elements that make your brand unique. Why are you the absolute best option for your audience?

Bonafina provides large-scale printing equipment to other businesses. Note how they showcase the benefit to their audience—gaining support and help to choose the right items. People spend a lot on the machines, so they want assurance they’ll have some guidance in choosing correctly.

6. Overcome Objections

Social media is the dream of marketing professionals. You can use it to gain insight from a target’s posts. They might list some of their objections to other brands on their site, give you an inside tip on a personal preference or just list age and gender.

You can use all the information gathered from a few prospects to create a buyer persona. Once you have a general idea of preferences and behaviors, you can tweak your landing pages to better meet the needs of your users and overcome any objections they might have.

7. Learn Their Language

When it comes to connecting with your target audience, it isn’t only what you say but the way you say it. For example, you can tap into the lingo for the type of customer you wish to reach. If you want to sell lessons to twenty-something golf enthusiasts, what are some of the phrases they use?

Try different combinations of words for your headings and your calls to action (CTAs). With a little practice, you’ll write high-converting CTAs. Implement new phrasing and run a split test to see how users respond.

Tweak Your Site Often

Try different tactics and compare them to the old version. A/B tests show how well users respond to different colors, positions and language for your page’s elements. Take the time to run split testing, study the results and tweak your site until you reach the conversion rate you want.

Author

Eleanor Hecks is the editor of Designerly Magazine. Eleanor was the creative director and occasional blog writer at a prominent digital marketing agency before becoming her own boss in 2018. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and dog, Bear.