How does your website stand apart from the crowd? If your website is just blending in, you are not setting your business up for success. There are thousands of competitors on the internet looking to attract the same visitors that you are. Without taking concrete steps to make your business pop and stand out amongst the competition, you will not be able to effectively entice those visitors. This article is here to teach you how to create a website that resonates with audiences. You can blend visual styles, content quality, and your own creativity to create a website that genuinely draws visitors in. Put your resources to their best use by following the tips and tricks outlined in this article for your benefit.
Research
Do your homework. The good news is that if you’re currently reading this article, you’ve already started off in the right direction. However, one blog post isn’t enough. The internet is an expansive and diverse place. There is no “one size fits all” solution that’ll absolutely make your business top dog. Even tactics that have worked astronomically well for your competitors might end up doing jack squat for your business. The key to research is that you find trends. What are the common denominators among successful companies in your industries? Equally important, what tactics are you not seeing? Why aren’t your competitors utilizing these strategies?
Part of doing the research is asking yourself complex questions about your industry and taking the time to seek out answers. Fortunately, the answers have never been easier to find than they are with the internet. All it takes is an inquisitive mind and a little bit of your time, but it will do wonders for your business in the long run.
Collaborate
Collaboration seems like a bad idea for many businesses. Why should you waste your time trying to work with someone that may very well be a competitor? Why spend your time benefiting another business instead of your own, even if you’re not in the same industry?
The truth is that business is a collaborative enterprise. No titan of industry has ever gotten to the top without a substantial dose of teamwork along the way. Your business is no exception. This doesn’t mean that you need to seek out your competitors and try to strike a deal, but this means that you should constantly be on the lookout for potential partnerships. Are there ways in which another business can help you out via trade of goods and services? Can you partner on an event or even a product?
When you collaborate you can pool resources for the collective good, meaning that for a time you can put twice the resources behind your name and your business, which gives you an even better chance of standing out and finding lasting success.
Be Original
Part of making your business stand out is making content that stands out. Most entrepreneurs don’t like to consider their business artistically, but here is where the artistic sensibilities of business come to the forefront. You need to find your voice, especially if you are creating content on a regular basis. Bland, uninspired content isn’t going to convince anybody and it certainly won’t sensationalize your business.
If you want to make your website pop, you have to create content that can’t be found anywhere else. What can you say and what can you create that your competitors cannot? That is the key to originality. Find what makes you and your business unique and make that the highlight of your internet presence. As silly as it may sound, you have to put on a bit of a show to truly engage your potential customers and captivate users when they come across your website. Make the content that they can’t find anywhere else and your website will quickly jump to the top of their list.
Get Creative
This paragraph might start to sound a lot like the one above. However, this principle is important enough to require some extra emphasis. When I say get creative, I don’t just mean add some extra pictures or use a cute font. What I mean is, get weird. Think outside of the box and throw convention to the wind. The easiest thing you can do to prevent your website from leaving any kind of impression whatsoever is to make it a cookie-cutter style that you took from a basic template.
In short, your website needs some pizazz. Your voice and your brand should be distinct. You should get in the habit of applying this distinction to everything you create. Whether it’s a unique visual style, a clever wordplay, or anything else you can imagine, you have to create something that is unique to you and work it into your content. This is what sticks in the mind of the customer, and it is also what will help your business rise above the crowd rather than get lost in it.
Custom Images
The Internet is a visual medium. Not only does your text have to look aesthetically pleasing, but you have to have to make sure that your images stand out as well. Simply having an image present with your blog post isn’t enough, you need something it is as individual and distinct as your product and/or business. This doesn’t mean that you need a professional photoshoot for every image you upload, but it does mean that you should shy away from generic stock images whenever possible.
Familiarize yourself with graphics creation software or hire someone who is already familiar with graphic design, because custom images will do wonders for your business. People want to see things they can’t see elsewhere, and custom images are a great way to draw attention to what you have to offer.
Video
Similar to still images, video is a powerful tool for making your brand and business stand out among the crowd. Video is dynamic and can be tailored to fit your needs. Animated tutorials? A simple Q and A? Video is one of the easiest and most effective tools to implement into your website. However, video also comes with higher standards of professionalism.
With video, customers will expect more. Out of focus images and poorly drawn graphics will not cut it. However, video also affords you the opportunity to directly voice your opinions or concerns. Video can be much more direct in its approach to delivering information and can utilize varied footage to keep the video interesting and engaging. Even if all you intend to use video for is a simple Facebook Live update from your office once a week, video is a powerful tool that you should be using. Use professional videographers when you can, but don’t be afraid to get personal and do it yourself depending on the context of the video.
Speaking of video. Facebook Live is an exciting and highly engaging tool that you should be using. Facebook Live helps your business stand out by creating a direct link between you, the creator, and your viewers. Facebook Live lets you see who’s watching and access their comments as soon as they are posted. Facebook Live lets you react to your audience and it allows them to react to you in real-time.
Facebook Live creates active engagement between you and your audience. This direct connection is the easiest way for you to directly show and tell them how your business is different from anything else they’ve seen before. Utilize this free tool to reach your audience whenever and to set yourself apart by meeting them where they are at.
Sales Funnel
Make sure you have a plan in place for when you do catch a customer’s attention. Nothing could be worse than piquing a customer’s interest and then quickly losing them due to disorganization or lack of a proper sales funnel. Making your business pop is important, but it’s equally important to reassure the customer with a well designed and efficient back-end that continues to wow, but also delivers on the promises your business is making. Use the “wow” to reel the user into your website and then guide them through the sales process. Don’t bombard them with extraneous information and pushy sales pitches, but walk them through the process, showing them how your company can fill that void in their life.
Have a Personality
Don’t be boring. The worst thing you can do for your business is to come across as a suit. Don’t let people associate your business with something that doesn’t excite or interest them. Don’t be afraid to let your personality shine through your business. Not only does a distinct personality increase your chances of brand recognition, but it provides reassurance and builds trust between you and your customers.
Feel free to make jokes, use specific language, and develop a unique communicative style. Tying this back to outside of the box thinking, your company won’t stick in anyone’s mind if it is merely copying what others are doing. For your business or your website to really pop online, you need to develop a brand (or feel) that users can instantly associate with your business.
Develop a Brand
Developing a personality for your content is a good first step. However, it is not the only step. Your personality needs to evolve into a brand. A brand is a consistent look or feel that is synonymous across all of your webpages, social media accounts, and post. The best thing is that your brand can be whatever you want it to be, or at least what you feel is most effective. However, to truly find what brand and brand personality fits best for your business, you need to experiment.
Part of this experimentation process begins with research, but a lot of it is also trial and error. You have to see what works, and sometimes the only way to see what works is to figure out what’s not working and adapt your process from there.
Be Sociable
The best way to spread awareness of your brand and to get people to latch onto your brand personality is to be social. If you are not using social media as a daily part of your marketing routine, you are practically running the race with one leg weighted down. Social Media is a dominant force in the world of marketing and your business needs to be using it. This doesn’t mean that a Facebook account will solve all your problems, but it’s a start. The more platforms you can establish a concrete presence on, the greater your chances of making your brand pop and of keeping your business at the forefront of users’ and customer’s minds.
Conclusion
If you want your business to pop, the best thing you can do is to start creating content. Whether you’re writing blogs, taking pictures, shooting videos, or making memes, you need to get started producing something. Taking that a step further, you need to start promoting what you’re producing. Your content is virtually worthless if it is not being presented to any kind of audience. It is your responsibility to yourself and to your business to follow through when promoting your content.
Do your research, don’t be afraid of trial and error, and be prepared to adapt your strategies when they aren’t returning the most desirable results. Make sure you are taking full advantage of all of the various platforms, tools, and strategies at your disposal. With the internet, there is always room for growth and improvement for your brand, both internally and externally. Make a commitment to be unique and your business will begin to pop of its own accord. Treat your audience to something that can’t find anywhere else and they will flock to your business in droves.
Featured Image:
Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay
