5 Reasons To Make Your Website Mobilefriendly



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  • Make Sure Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly. Recent studies indicate that over 60% of Google searches come from mobile devices. For this reason, it’s important to ensure that your website is optimized for them. Google rewards websites that are mobile-optimized. Similarly to desktop optimization, you will want to focus on developing mobile SEO.
  • A mobile-friendly website helps you build credibility with your clients, customers and the influencers within your industry. Your mobile website needs to offer visitors an exceptional experience so they recognize your business as a resource that offers helpful information and excellent products and services.
  • A mobile-friendly website is a way to gain the appreciation and loyalty of the great number of users of mobile devices. It’s expected that by 2019, 67.1% of the world's population will use mobile phones, 52.5% of which will be smartphone users.

All the more reason to make sure your WordPress site is mobile-ready, right? Fail to recognize the strength of the mobile market, and you certainly will miss out on opportunities big and small to reach a larger market of consumers. Luckily for you, it’s not as technically challenging as you might first think to optimize your site for mobile use.

By | July 16, 2020

If you’re in the professional services industry, you already know that the competition today is fierce. What many executives don’t know, however, is just how critical a B2B website is in helping professional services firms stand out from the rest of the pack.

So, how important is it? The Hinge Research Institute has found that 82% of professional services buyers check out a firm’s website to evaluate them as a potential provider.

This makes your website the most common source of information for buyers considering your services – far exceeding traditional references. Notably, other sources like online search and social media may ultimately lead buyers to your website as well.

But a firm’s website isn’t just important because of the information it provides. It also establishes credibility, and this dimension is more essential than many organizations realize. Our most current research suggests 9 out of 10 buyers will rule out a firm before even talking with them. If your website doesn’t clearly communicate how you can address a buyer’s challenges, there’s a good chance you’ll get ruled out.

Why is that? Because individuals have grown so accustomed to highly sophisticated and engaging consumer websites that they expect the same of business websites.

5 Reasons To Make Your Website Mobile Friendly Checker

The continued growth in digital consumption has propelled B2B websites to be more important than ever. But how do you create a successful site that builds credibility, informs your audience, and drives your overall online presence forward?

Let’s examine seven best practices that will help you do just that.

1) Showcase educational content.

When prospects visit your site, they are typically looking for information related to their problems and for evidence of your expertise has addressed those types of problems. By creating valuable educational content, you can address both information and past performance in one fell swoop.

Keep all of your content in an organized “library” or “resources” section that is accessible right from your homepage. This should be a top-level subpage, placed prominently in your site navigation. On the library page itself, users should be able to organize your content by topic or format type.

You should never include promotional materials like sales sheets, sales presentations, brochures, or company news in this section. Instead, this is a hub for genuinely educational resources: how-to guides, whitepapers, research studies, and webinars. Make sure your content is professionally produced and demonstrates your firm’s areas of relevant expertise clearly. The writing and design should build your credibility, not undermine it.

If you’re going to commit to content, you must truly commit, as well – never let your library page stagnate. Update your library consistently with new content to demonstrate an ongoing dedication to education and industry engagement.

2) Highlight premium content to generate leads.

An educational eBook is a more in-depth, “premium” form of content than a blog post. While a blog post should be freely accessible to anyone in order to draw visitors, you may ask for useful information such as a visitor’s email address before allowing them to download premium content.

This strategy is called “gating” content. Gated content requires a form submission of some sort. If you ask for too many personal details, visitors will be discouraged, but they are usually willing to exchange their names and email addresses for valuable content – and these are some of the most useful pieces of information you can collect. With this data in hand, you can continue to nurture and draw in target audiences via content that aligns to the various stages of engagement. Relying on content that converts is a powerful and fundamental lead generation strategy.

How will visitors find your gated content in the first place? Include attractive and relevant offers for premium content such as eBooks in your freely accessible content (i.e. blog posts) at the middle or the end, where it is noticeable without being intrusive.

3) Make your site mobile-friendly.

More and more people are accessing B2B websites through mobile. These screens are smaller, and site designs that are beautiful and functional on a laptop or desktop display may be jumbled and unintuitive on a mobile device.

To give visitors the best possible experience, it’s important to prioritize mobile-friendliness in your design. After all, users who have a bad experience accessing your site a mobile device will leave quickly and most likely not come back. And, Google does adjust rankings based on mobile-friendliness and displaying search results with “mobile-friendly” tags. Thus, leaving no question on the role of mobile as it relates to overall visibility in search results.

How can you ensure that your site is mobile-friendly? The answer lies in responsive design. This technique uses CSS to create sites that will adapt fluidly, elegantly, and functionally to the dimensions of a user’s device, creating a great experience for all of your visitors.

4) Optimize your site for search engine indexing.

Above, I mentioned that mobile-friendliness can impact your site’s ranking in search engine results. There are many other “ranking signals,” and using them deliberately is crucial for building visibility online and for maximizing your search engine indexing.

While effective search engine optimization (or SEO) is a massive topic, some of the most essential SEO best practices include:

  • Be sure that your pages have unique titles and “meta” descriptions, so Google (and searchers) can tell exactly what each page is about.
  • Use the “image alt” HTML tag to give context to images on your site. This will both improve accessibility for users and help Google understand the content of your images.
  • Include relevant keyword phrases. Which phrases do folks search for when they’re looking for expertise like yours? Include these phrases in both your site copy and metadata. Don’t go overboard trying to cram in keyword phrases, though – instead, use only the most natural and relevant ones.
  • Consider the page load time. Online, a positive user experience (UX) is a must. Make sure that your page design, plug-ins, etc. are optimally set up to take advantage of the best download speeds available by your host service provider.
  • Use Google Search Console to monitor your site’s performance, leveraging the data to increase traffic and produce more relevant content. If visitors are flocking to blogs on a particular topic, this may be a good area for you to focus on.

Even more than other aspects of online marketing, SEO best practices are quickly and constantly evolving. Make sure your team is prepared to keep up with the latest SEO techniques and guide your strategy accordingly.

5) Create clear calls-to-action.

All too often, visitors who want to learn more or explore services on a B2B website are left without a clear idea of what they should do to proceed. If they can’t tell how to contact you (or whatever else they seek to do) easily, they will simply move on.

This is why it’s essential to include clear, attractive calls-to-action that usher visitors forward to a particular task, explaining what to do next. These typically take the form of bright, descriptive buttons. As you plan your website (or website upgrade), you should create an offer strategy that highlights which calls-to-action will be placed on a given page, and why. Think of this as setting forth a roadmap for the target personas your website seeks to connect with.

Wherever they reside, calls-to-action should stand out from the rest of the page and should be easy to understand. Their text should be descriptive, specific, and active – “Get my free evaluation” rather than “Submit.”

At their most effective, calls-to-action are part of a detailed science. Use A/B testing to compare visitors’ responses to variations on your calls-to-action experimenting with different text, colors, etc. to increase click and conversion rates.

6) Demonstrate your firm’s expertise.

Your specialized expertise is ultimately what sets you apart in the marketplace. Without it, no amount of marketing-savvy will help you succeed. With this in mind, your expertise should also lie at the heart of everything you do online. Our research suggests that buyers are placing more emphasis on firm expertise in their selection process today than just five years ago.

Use imagery and language that will resonate with your target audience. Your design and copy should reinforce your credibility, illustrating your firm’s knowledge and service offerings, and clarifying your expertise so visitors understand exactly what you know and how you can help them.

Help visitors get to know you by providing detailed bios of the people in your firm, including their pictures, background, experience, recent projects, professional associations, and any other relevant information. Video features and firm overviews are another way to engaging, “face-to-face” introduction to your organization, its people, and its culture. Depending on your firm’s culture and comfort level with social media, including links to social connections is useful and helps staff seem more approachable.

7) Make your site easy to navigate.

As we’ve discussed above, your site should provide a great deal of detailed information – but it must be clearly organized and easy to navigate. Otherwise, visitors might become overwhelmed, or may not find the right information in the first place. Unlike entertainment websites where visitors might be more willing to search for ‘hidden’ information, the website navigation architecture (information architecture) in a B2B website is not the place to get clever as it will only frustrate visitors – wasting their time and prompting them to bail out!

Be sure to keep your navigation menus simple and uncluttered, with no more than six top-level categories. You can guide users to more specific subsets of pages through dropdown menus – just make certain these menus are easy to find and use font that is large and legible. As a rule, you should avoid small text links throughout your site, and remember that user interface is very important for SEO considerations.

At the end of the day, your website’s structure and design are the means through which you accomplish the website’s ultimate goal – getting the right information to the right people, and eventually converting those visitors into buyers. As you consider a new site or site renovation, make sure the goals and the best practices outlined above are at the top of your list. If you follow these guidelines, you will be well-situated to stand out from the rest of the marketplace.

Additional Resources

  • Get recommendations and practical steps to make your website more effective with a free website planning review.
  • Download a free copy of the Lead Generating Website Guide for a high-level overview of the Lead Generating Website concept
  • Check out our webinar, How to Build the Perfect Professional Services Website and learn how your website can produce a dependable flow of qualified leads and new revenue.
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How Hinge Can Help

5 Reasons To Make Your Website Mobile-friendly

Your B2B website should be one of your firm’s greatest assets. Our High Performance Website Program helps firms drive online engagement and leads through valuable content. Hinge can create the right website strategy and design to take your firm to the next level.

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Article updated on March 14, 2019.

Once you’ve converted a site visitor into a customer, it’s time to take it a step further and keep them coming back—and turn them into brand advocates. Brand advocates are the people who are loyal users of your goods and services, and most important, are the ones who will sing your praises to others! Here are five easy ways you can keep visitors coming back.

1. Personalize Your Website

Providing visitors with a unique, personalized experience makes it easier to turn them into brand advocates. Here’s how you can customize their experience:

Offer customized landing pages.

There are several ways you can use customized landing pages to increase engagement. An easy way to implement this is by featuring products based on what customers have bought or engaged with previously. AddThis features Targeting Audiences overlay, helping you feature these products. Wayfair does a great job of engaging customers by showing them products they’ve already viewed, and then products in a similar wheelhouse picked for them.

Curate a featured section.

Showcase products or content in a special “Best of” section. It can be a large banner on your homepage or a sidebar list. The AddThis Link Promotion Banner makes it easy to highlight products or content you want to draw your audience to. Whether you’re basing the showcased products on seasonal events, user behavior, or items that need more visibility, make it relevant to the consumer. Consider creating different versions of your showcased products for different landing pages, and use them to measure performance.

Provide new and returning visitors with relevant information.

With AddThis Audience Targeting Rules, you can create rules to show appropriate messaging to new and returning users. For example, you can create “Get started” messaging for new visitors, and “Explore more” messaging for returning visitors. Read more on How to Engage Both New and Returning Visitors to Your Website.

Suggest content users may like.

The best way to keep visitors on your website is to offer them content that interests them. The AddThis Related Posts Tools allows you to do just that. For example, if your site focuses on selling clothing, you can engage your visitors with content about style trends; or if your site focuses on cookware, you can engage your visitors with content around organic food and recipes. The Rogers Family Coffee Company used this tool to increase engagement and saw significant results.

2. Showcase What’s New and Popular

An easy way to turn visitors into brand advocates is to give them a reason to come back to your site . . . and to keep coming back. Offering new content on a regular basis and highlighting your greatest hits will foster repeat engagement.

Highlight your new content.

Whether you have a dedicated section, a large homepage banner, or just list content and products in chronological order, make sure visitors know that what they’re seeing is new. And also, keep it fresh. This will give visitors a reason to keep coming back. We Work Remotely denotes new job listings with a “new” button, so frequent visitors can scan content quickly. Sur La Table adds words like “new” and “just added” to their homepage images to highlight new products and accessories.

Keep popular content front and center.

Your popular content is popular for a reason, so keep it in heavy rotation as long as it’s relevant! Keep an eye on articles that are consistently showing a decent level of traffic in Google Analytics, and resurface those posts to new users. Having a section dedicated to what’s popular, or bestsellers, will also make users feel like you have a large audience; and if they enjoy the content, they’ll feel like they’re a part of your community. Lululemon’s “bestsellers” section is the first-offered list on their homepage. This gives new visitors a simple insight into what the brand’s fanbase loves.

Emphasize highly shared content.

The more shares a piece of content has, the more users will want to share it as well. If hundreds of people already like it, surely their Facebook friends will too! AddThis Sharing Buttons offer an easy-to-implement ability to display the number of social shares content has received. See how Mercy Home grew traffic by 10 percent with AddThis Share Tools.

3. Create a Good User Experience (UX)

Your website design and usability are two of the most important factors that influence how much time visitors spend on your site, and whether they’ll return. A clean, attractive design and easy navigation will go a long way in turning first-time visitors into brand advocates.

Make sure your site is clear and well-designed.

When it comes to design, keep it simple. Forget bells and whistles, and focus on the essentials. Use eye-catching colors, readable fonts, and rich images and video. Don’t be afraid of whitespace! Harry’s is a beautiful, minimalist site, but an effective one. Here’s more in-depth guidelines from Hubspot to help you get started that include simplicity and hierarchy, and bring us to another point: usability.

Make sure your site is usable — on a computer AND a phone.

It’s not enough to have a site that looks good—it needs to be easy to navigate. Intuitive menus, clear calls to action, and robust search capabilities all make for a good user experience. And don’t forget the #1 rule—make sure your website is mobile-friendly. Zipcar is an easy-to-navigate site with all the important information you’ll need to decide whether or not to join right on the front page.

4. Engage Users through Email

Email is a great tool for engaging one-on-one with your audience, keeping them engaged with your content, or re-engaging them after they’ve abandoned your site. Personalize your emails with content that targets exactly what the consumer needs. When you provide users with specific content beyond what they can find on the website, they’ll feel “in the know” and will be more likely to become brand advocates.

Collect emails through your website.

A 2014 study showed that email marketing is nearly 40 times more effective at acquiring customers than Facebook and Twitter combined; 91 percent of US consumers use email daily. Calls to action to sign up for your newsletter should be prominent on your website. The AddThis Overlay Tool can be used to collect email addresses. A customizable conversion lightbox pops up, prompting visitors to sign up, getting your messaging in front of everyone who visits your site. See how Minneapolis Running used audience targeting to grow their email subscribers.

Regularly communicate via newsletter.

Use your newsletter to highlight special offers, new content, and seasonal events. You should send your newsletter on a consistent schedule, so subscribers will know when to expect it. Too many emails will make users unsubscribe, so when you’re setting your schedule, make sure the value contained in an email warrants the frequency. Consider offering exclusive content or deals to those who are signed up, so they feel like they’re being rewarded for subscribing. The Skimm has a “birthdays” section in their daily newsletter, where they highlight every subscriber celebrating that day. They also recently added a section to their newsletter, highlighting impressive feats their subscribers have accomplished.

5. Reward Your Brand Advocates

Make Your Website Free

Once your brand advocates start spreading the word about your products or services, it’s time to say thank you. There are a number of ways you can reward your loyal users, including:

Offer a personal acknowledgement.

If you have a set of customers or users who have gone above and beyond in their demonstration of brand loyalty, you can deepen their affection for your product, site, or brand even further by reaching out to them personally. Not only does Maker’s Mark provide exclusive event offers for becoming a member of their ambassador program, but you also get your name on a real barrel of their bourbon. Once your barrel is aged and ready, you’re invited to claim a few bottles and take a complimentary distillery tour.

Give public recognition through social media or your website.

If someone sings your praises on Twitter, give them a shout-out! Feature testimonials on your website. Let brand advocates know that you’re listening and that you appreciate the support. The CW features a “Fan of the Week” for each show on Facebook, and also gives them an on-air plug.

Launch an “insiders” referral program.

Referrals are a powerful tool for building your website audience. People tend to trust recommendations from friends and family more than businesses, and if you offer an incentive for referrals, users will be much more likely to sing your praises. Here’s a list of 79 referral programs, some of which are highly successful and from brands you recognize, like Amazon Prime and Uber. Read 8 Smart Ways to Drive Website Traffic (and Generate Leads) to learn more.

Implementing a loyalty program.

5 Reasons To Make Your Website Mobile Friendly Html

Loyalty programs often come with perks such as discounts, free shipping, or special gifts. You can have users sign up for yours, like Sephora’s Beauty Insider program, or it can be based on loyalty tiers—Sephora upgrades users to higher-level programs when they reach spending thresholds, and those levels come with better perks. Check out these 10 easy ways a small business can implement a customer loyalty program.

How To Make Your Website

The bottom line: If you have a good product, you’ll have brand advocates. Engaging with them, rewarding them, and offering them value is what will keep them out there marketing your brand. Download our handy Turning a Visitor into a Brand Advocate Checklist to keep this information at your fingertips as you grow your brand online.