If you’re a small business owner with a website, here are 5 things your website needs!

Websites are hard. I’ll be the first to admit that it isn’t always my favorite task to tackle, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a necessary task. Your website IS your storefront, especially for businesses (like photographers) where I don’t have a brick and mortar storefront for clients to visit.

Over the years I’ve learned a lot of about keeping my website functional, complete, and user friendly. Read through this list to see the 5 things I see most websites missing out on and how you can avoid these website pitfalls!

1. A Contact Form

You need a contact form so that customers can visit your website and send you an inquiry for your business. You can ask specific details about the type of job or service you provide so you can provide your potential customer with a more accurate quote.

And while we’re at it, you also should have CONTACT INFO! This needs to be posted somewhere on your website. The contact page would make the most sense! And you can also include it in the footer of the page. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve visited a website and there is no phone number or even an email listed for the business. As a customer, it’s a HUGE turn off for me to not have any contact info. Sometimes, I just want to make a dang phone call. Not having a number to contact a business makes my job even harder. And nobody wants to invest time into inquiring with a business just to find out they can’t afford it.

Which brings me to my second point…

2. Pricing Details

This point tends to ruffle feathers with businesses but here’s the deal. If I can’t afford a service, why would I spend time reaching out?

So as a business, if you find yourself with inquiries who respond and tell you they can’t afford you, it’s probably because you aren’t sharing any pricing information anywhere on your website.

Now I understand some businesses might have very specific pricing because they perform very specific jobs, but you could at least list a price range or average cost for the different types of services your business offers.

We choose not to share our entire wedding collections layout on the main website. We do share starting pricing on the weddings page, full pricing on our portraits page and I include the average wedding investment on our contact page. This way clients know what they can expect to spend before even spending the time to inquire with us.

3. Links to Social Accounts

In 2020, 40% of my leads came from social media; Instagram + Facebook + Pinterest. 25% came from Google searches, 20% came from my Wedding Wire and The Knot accounts and 15% came from Vendor Referrals and Past Clients.

Depending on your target market, social media is probably where a lot of potential clients are hanging out. Now you don’t have to post on Instagram every single day. You don’t even need to hop on the latest trends to stay in the social media game. Yes, I said it! But having these accounts as another lead source can be so beneficial for your business. You’ll reach more clients by utilizing these resources.

And if Instagram isn’t your strong suit, check out our 12 month content calendar HERE! For less than 15 cents a post, you can have a years worth of IG content literally planned for you with prompts to help you write engaging captions!

4. Quick Loading Images

We’ve all experienced a website click that took FOREVER to load. Maybe it was your WiFi or cell reception, but more than likely it was really big photo files that load real slow. This is not only making it annoying for customers looking your website up, but it’s making your site rank lower on google because it’s a slow website.

There are tons of options for resources that can resize your images without suffering a huge loss in the quality. As a photographer, that is a huge factor for me. I use Blogstomp to resize my blog images and images I’m using on the main website. Smaller files = faster loading speeds. Faster loading speeds = better ranking and ease of use for customers. That experience matters.

5. Mobile Friendly Site Options

This is probably my favorite feature of having a Showit website! Designing a desktop layout of a website is typically where I see businesses spending a lot of their time. And you should have a great looking website. You should also make sure that the design you have spent your time on (or hiring a pro to design for you) functions well on BOTH desktop computers and mobile devices. I like to have someone I know check the mobile version on an iPhone and Android, because sometimes the design shows up differently on the two platforms.

According to my analytics, 60% of my website traffic is mobile devices. So if your site doesn’t have a functioning mobile friendly version, you could be losing out on a lot of potential clients. Having a mobile friendly version of your site makes it easier for customers to inquire.

Did you enjoy these tips on 5 things your website needs?

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