Work-At-Home Success Experts Share How They Make Their Business Websites Stand Out
A website is a must-have when you work from home. Freelancers and home business owners need an online presence to attract work and gather leads. But would-be telecommuters can use a website as an online resume, giving a more professional look to potential employers. If you’re not tech-savvy, website building can be a daunting task. This week’s experts give us their tips and suggestions on what will make YOUR website stand out from the crowd.
Judy Tsuei
Wild Hearted Words
@awilderlove
As an entrepreneur, it’s absolutely smart to determine where to invest your resources, especially when it comes to websites. You don’t know how many clients I work with who spent way too much on a designer to create their Squarespace site! My advice is to invest in your brand logo design and your photography — with those two elements alone, you’ll make a stand-out impression to your ideal clients.
Fabi Paolini
FabiPaolini.com
@fabipaolini
My main tip for having a WAH Business Website that stands out, is making sure it looks as professional as possible. No matter what it is that you do, you need to make sure that your brand stands out and reflects the quality of your business. I have built a 6-figure business as a Brand strategist and designer all by working from home. It doesn’t make a difference to my clients what my work situation is as long as I am reflecting the quality and value they receive. The same thing has happened with my clients. I have worked with online e-Commerce sites, with fashion bloggers with monthly views of over 1 million readers, and a variety of coaches. The key here is to make sure you are always reflecting that value.
At the end of the day, no matter what it is that you do or where you work from, there will be endless competition in your field. It’s you job to
truly reflect what makes you different from anyone else. It’s important giving your audience a clear understanding of what they will get from you that’s different from anyone else.
Brandon Seymour
Most WAH business owners don’t have the marketing budget to compete with larger, well-established brands. If WAH businesses want to stand out on Google and other major search engines, it’s important that their websites are structured in a way that allows search engines to easily crawl, index, and rank the content on their site. One thing that business owners can do to improve their organic search presence is using Schema markup. Schema is a predefined set of vocabulary that search engines use to understand what a particular page is about – or as Schema.org explains it, it allows search engines to intelligently display relevant content to the user. With just a few lines of code, businesses can highlight the information on their site that they feel would be most useful to potential customers. This can result in not only higher rankings, but also higher click-through rate.
Jason Wuerch
Frugal For Less LLC
@frugalforless
Do your research: I run a personal finance blog, and there are so many out there these days. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t compete in this niche or any other particular niche. Do your research to find what competitors have missed and go full-out. These days, it’s a bit difficult to cover something broad. For example, I try and cover money making apps
Debra M. Cohen
Home Remedies of NY, Inc.
@hrnbiz
I make my home based contractor referral business website stand out by:
1. Including customer testimonials with photos that clearly state the value of my services.
2. Featuring media coverage about my business that helps establish me and my business as an expert in my industry.
3. Using my photo throughout the site to personalize my business and let potential customers know that they are working with an individual and not a large, national corporation with call centers or customer service representatives.
Paul Koger
Find out what is the main piece of information your website user has come to look for from your site and provide it in your home page and make the solution visible throughout the site.
I see so many websites these days that are trying to be everything at once. This makes the customer confused and they will probably leave your site before they’ve found what they came to look for. Make your message clear and offer a solution/solve their problem with as little amount of clicks as possible for the user. This will make your website stand out from the vast majority of your competitors.
Ling Wong
Business Soulwork by Ling Wong
@slideberry
Stop chasing bright shiny objects or copying what your competitors are doing!
Most people focus their website on the product or service level, and that can easily make you sound like everyone else.
Your visitors are wondering, why are you different and why should I trust you? Who are you and what’s your story that makes you get what I need?
To stand out, your website content needs to answer those questions by giving voice to your values, points-of-view, and personality. When you connect with your visitors on a personal and emotional level, the connection and resonance will naturally lead to conversion.
Note from Leslie:
This week’s experts offer valuable advice. My tips echo what others say, including:
- Your website should be easy to understand and navigate. I’m always surprised how hard it can be to find important information, such as “Contact” on some websites.
- It should have consistent layout, colors, etc. Granted, WAHS’s home page is a different layout from the rest of the site, but the colors and top menus are consistent throughout the site.
- The content should provide the information people want or need when they visit your site.
- The content should speak in terms of benefits to your potential clients or customers. Instead of boasting about how great you are, tell visitors how your greatness will directly make their lives better.
- Provide proof for your claims such as testimonials, awards, media appearances, etc that give you credibility.
- Make your site easy to find. The above suggestions are for visitors, but you also want to use SEO to help search engines find and rank your site so it can deliver it as a search result to people looking for what you offer.
