5 ways to make your website stand out from the crowd
You need your website to stand out from the crowd to reach your potential customers. Here are five key things you can do to help it hook your target clients:
1. Use personalised images with natural subjects
Images are an important part of your website content. Used well, they can help hook your ideal customers.
Most people would not use badly-taken, blurry images to sell their services or products, but many people do rely on stock images.
Stock photographs are everywhere. Some of them are good, some of them are a little cheesy.
Good stock images tend to be widely used. To see the problem for yourself, carry out an internet search to find out how the images you are using are being used elsewhere.
To make your site stand out, you need personalised images.
Photographs taken for you by a professional photographer might cost a few pounds in the short term, but they will bring big benefits for your website in the long term.
If you have to use stock images, get the freshest ones possible from an agency which specialises in non-cheesy shots taken with a natural feel, like Death To The Stock Photo. If you join their mailing list, they’ll send you ten new images every month. That reduces the number of sites which have already used your favourite image.
2. Custom icons
Icons are visual signposts through your website. Customising your icons can help to give each page a personalised feel, while maintaining a consistent look throughout the site. Icons can be customised to reflect your industry, your area, and your colour schemes.
3. Custom typography
Typography is one of the key elements of any website, being up to 95% of a design. Good, consistent typography ties a design together and makes for a great user experience. Customising your typography can make it stand out from other websites. This needs to be done with care, though. An off-putting set of fonts and point sizes will do more harm than good. You need your site to be remembered for all the right reasons, rather than a bad user experience. Choose a few fonts (two or three) which don’t clash, and keep your colour palette small. Oddly, using very similar fonts can also be a problem, as the user’s eye picks up something is different but can’t work out what it is.
4. Include real customer recommendations – with images
Testimonials and case studies are your most powerful inbound marketing tool.
The most trusted are always from people who are prepared to be named and photographed.
Real people with real recommendations are the second best form of word-of-mouth marketing, after recommendations from someone’s family and friends.
Their story of your great service is an excellent method of making your website personal to your company.
5. Tell the story of your brand
In an age where most companies have websites and customers can choose products and services from the whole of the UK and beyond, it can be difficult to define your unique selling point.
One of the most effective ways of doing that is by telling your story on your website.
If your company is a family firm which has served your area for more than 50 years, telling that story will build an excellent level of trust with your customers. Telling the story of how your family came to establish it starts to build a relationship.
If you’re a young entrepreneur, your inspirational story introduces you and your great idea.
Your stories can be shared on social media regularly to help find your target audience online.
Our experts at Soap Agency are on hand to help you build a great website, helping to turn your page viewers into paying customers.