1 – Declutter The Navigation
When it comes to website navigation, it is important to limit yourself to the essential points. Over the years, your website has grown, and with each new coaching service or consulting field, the navigation of your website has expanded too. Or did you delete what is not your core business anymore? Probably not?
It’s now time to think of the users who have to wade through lots of categories and subcategories before navigating to the content they actually want to see. Many of them will get confused and leave your website if it takes more than 2-3 clicks to reach a page.
Limit your navigation to up to 5 primary tabs and 2-3 sublevels. Focus on the most important categories and topics to ensure that website visitors can grasp the spectrum of your website fast.
Read on to learn how this gets easier!
2 – Declutter The Content
Less is more also applies to your website’s content. Yes, you are right, “content is king,” but only in terms of high-value blog posts, articles, videos etc. High-quality content is what defines a high-quality website.
Those whose website content offers real added value to their target group will be the content kings. No one else! In case you haven’t thought about it yet: Content is of added value if it is helpful to a visitor from your specific target group.
Does your blog post help to solve a specific problem? Does your video offer new insights? Is your blog article educating, entertaining or inspiring with regard to your coaching or consulting field of expertise? If not, remove it! Or at least move it out of sight into a blog archive. Don’t let unspecific or outdated content bury your high-value content.
If the user can’t spot your best pieces immediately, that’s taking lots of great opportunities away from you. Users notice very quickly whether they find a website useful or not. If it’s no good, they quickly leave and look for better content to satisfy their needs. And they will never come back either!
Once you declutter your website’s content, reducing the navigation is less challenging too!
Have you heard of the blink test?
The blink test are the 3 to 5 seconds an average site visitor spends scanning a website visually and then deciding if they want to spend time looking through it. If your website does not pass the blink test, then most visitors will abandon your website.
3 – Edit Your Copy
The copy on your homepage or service pages should be straightforward and easy to digest. Everything that might be on your mind regarding your coaching or consulting services and offerings is not everything a website visitor needs or wants to read. Always think of the users first!
Your copy should mainly sell the idea of using your coaching or consulting services. That is the main goal. Don’t write everything you know; write everything prospective clients need to know to make the decision to hire you.
It is without saying that your copy should be well-written! Shorten your sentences, and break up large text blocks. Most website SEO tools will analyse the readability of your copy. Listen to what is says and reduce the complexity of your sentences.
4 – Place Your CTAs wisely
Your website must have a purpose. As a coach or consultant, most likely, this is going to be attracting new clients. Therefore, each of your pages needs one, and only one, call-to-action (CTA): tell your website visitors what to do next. It could be clicking a button to get in touch with you or signing-up for your newsletter or your free webinar.
The content of the whole page should be directed towards this one CTA. On a service page, you might have several buttons to book a call with you. A blog post might show the sign-up form to your mailing list so that people can get more of your valuable information, while you get their email addresses to send them more of your content. This is how you will build trust, a relationship and eventually sell to them.
All in all, turning website visitors into clients must be the focus of what happens on your website. The actions that a user takes are your top priority. This is how you should view your website and make content decisions accordingly.
5 – Increase Your Website’s Usability
Website usability is complex and should be left to the experts. However, there are some small things with significant effects that everyone can quickly implement. Just follow what has been tested already and put some standard elements exactly where the experienced web users would expect them:
- Place your website’s logo in the top left corner or the middle of your header element. Link it to your home page so people can always get back there with one click.
- Your navigation should be easy to use. Make sure that drop-down elements don’t cover important content, check the subpages not just your home page! Use a colour scheme or pointers to show people which page is active.
- If you use social media buttons to link to your social media profiles, don’t have them in the top right corner of your header element. They are better placed in the footer since you don’t want to immediately lose your new website visitors to social media where lots of other people might grab their attention.
- More important are the social media share buttons on your blog posts so people can share your content and send you more website visitors. They should be easy to spot, place them before and after the body text of your blog articles.
- (Don’t mix up these two different types of social media buttons!)
- Links to your privacy policy or contact form are essential but still belong in the footer and not in the main navigation.
- Have a visible call-to-action button, e.g. “Book free consultation”, in the top right corner of your header element so that people can find that anytime.
- UX experts like to see buttons in a different colour than your brand colours so that they stand out more.
- Make sure that any pop-ups or sign-up forms appear correctly on any device or screen size. Check that the “send button” is visible and active! This is one of the most tragic mistakes that can happen!
- Use web (!) fonts in a decent size and colours that provide high contrast. Imagine trying to read low-contrast text on a mobile device while it is bright and sunny.
- Pay attention to text hierarchy. That means each page should only have one main H1 headline. Then guide the reader (and search engines) through the text using subheadings. Work with H2 and H3s to structure your text. Always break up long text blocks.
- Keep in mind that usability is often referred to as “user experience (UX)”. In plain language, this means that the website visit should be an experience. A clear structure, sensible layout, attractive images and great graphics make a positive experience. And the longer your visitors stay on your website and the more they enjoy it there, the better this is for your search engine ranking. Their “dwell time” is measured by Google & Co.
6 – Make Your Website Responsive
Did you build your website on your desktop 5+ years ago? Nowadays more and more people want to display your website on their smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, phablets and other devices. Many of my clients only ever view their websites on their desktops. That can be your greatest mistake because you might lose many potential clients using their smartphones.
Responsive design is the answer. And while many website DIY kits or WordPress themes claim that they are responsive already, from my experience, there is still some work that needs to be done.
So first, check your website live on different devices. Also, use the google mobile-friendly test. Then check if you can view and edit your website’s responsiveness in your backend or by using some additional plugins.
You might need some help with that, but make sure that your website is up-to-date and accessible on all devices.
7 – Increase Your Website’s Speed
Underperforming websites usually have long loading times: And this is mainly related to issues that I have already mentioned in the first 6 points of this article. A lack of care in web design and content optimisation always has a trickle effect on the technical level. Go and get your website’s page speed tested. The best-in-class load time is 1.6 seconds but 5.3. would be really great too.
In plain language: If you overload your website with content, unoptimised background images, and heavy code, the page speed slows considerably. And if a page does not load quickly, most users won’t wait and google will dish out penality points. Even the best google ranking is worthless if people can’t quickly get to your website after they have found it.
A low website performance equals to low traffic, and low traffic means low sales.
Page speed issues are not so easy to tackle without some technical knowledge. But a good starting point would be a plugin to optimise the size of all images used on your website. And in the future, only upload small file sizes, using .jpg instead of .png image files or compressing files including pdfs.
I hope these seven hacks will help you to make your website do more for the success of your coaching or consulting business. If you need help with anything, please get in touch. Also, check out my new offer Website in A Week, where I will move your existing content into a brand new state-of-the-art website in just five days.
