What do website visitors want?

Posted on 10/04/2019

Developing a new website is exciting, if a little daunting, for most companies. Whether a fledgling business or a well-established firm, getting your online presence right is an important task. On the surface of it, it seems like it’s an easy thing to do, after all we all know our businesses, products and services inside out, we just need to tell everyone about them, right? Wrong! Remember visitors don’t have the knowledge about your company that you have, so if you drown out your key messages by trying to tell them everything from the outset, they’re likely to move onto another site very quickly.

First impressions count

To overcome this problem and make sure you make the right first impression, your site needs to be designed and developed with the user in mind. It sounds obvious, but I’m sure we’ve all come across websites that haven’t given us what we want.

Here are some things to consider in the structure and design of your website to make sure you’re giving visitors what they want and not just what you think they want.

Excellent navigation – your approach to navigation will depend on your business type and the industry in which you operate, but it should be simple and easy to follow. Make sure the key areas of your offering are easy to find and can be found from different directions within your website.

Clear structure – there’s nothing worse than landing on a website and being unsure of what you’re meant to do next. It affects the overall user experience and how you see the brand. Make sure in the build of your own website that visitors know what to do from the moment they arrive.   

State your difference – the product you sell may be the same as the products your competitors sell, but your business is different. Make sure visitors to your website understand why you’re unique and how your difference will benefit them.

Complete contact page – people want to know who is behind a website – it makes us feel safer and we are more likely to trust a company if we can see the people behind it. Fifty-one per cent of people say that thorough contact information is one of the most important factors on a website, so the more ways you can give visitors to contact you, the better.

Security – With data breaches becoming so prominent in recent years, we have become a lot more cautious as web users when it comes to handing over our information. Having an easy to find privacy policy that explains how information is used including your cookie policy helps visitors to trust you and your website.  

Keeping it simple for real results

Working out what visitors want to see on your website isn’t always easy, but it is worth the effort. Keep in mind that they don’t need to see every single detail of every single aspect of your business online. By including less, you’re making it easier for users to find what they want. And by limiting the information you offer to a certain degree, visitors are more likely to contact you to find out more.

As specialists in the fenestration industry, the team at Glazing Vault have designed and developed a series of cost-effective website design templates that are perfectly suited to the window and door sectors. Each has been carefully thought out to ensure installers and end-users are getting exactly what they need from the completed website and in turn, our customers are getting real results.