Picture this: You meet a business owner and ask him what his business does. He proceeds to tell you about his company’s history, values, awards, and milestones — for five minutes straight.
While that information isn’t bad, it’s just not the answer you wanted. You were hoping for a succinct answer to your question. And now your first impression of this guy is that he loves talking about himself, which may or not be true.
First impressions occur online once a user visits your site for the first time. To avoid a negative first impression, it’s important for your site to be more about the customer than you (i.e., make it customer-centric). Even if your site is user-friendly, you can turn off potential customers with too much self-talk.
But how do you create a customer-centric website? Here are a few suggestions.
1. Don’t have multiple pages about yourself
Some marketers will teach you how to communicate your story. What they don’t tell you is that visitors are most likely not interested in your story — they are interested in theirs.
I think that if you have History, Team, and Vision pages, you can likely combine these into one About page.
2. Avoid saying “we” too much
It’s only natural to want to talk about yourself. For many people, showing more interest in others than yourself is a learned skill. One way you can do that is by using “you” and “your” in your messaging more than “we” and “our.”
This is especially true for your home page, since that’s what your visitor sees first. Having you-oriented language adds a human element to your digital marketing that will likely appeal to potential customers and provide a better user experience overall.
3. Create an FAQ page
By answering your potential customers’ frequently asked questions, you are positioning yourself as the go-to company that can address your target audience’s needs and any pain points they may have.
But what if you don’t know what those questions are? Your customers and potential customers can likely tell you.
Having an FAQ page is also great for SEO. Since you’re providing relevant content geared towards meeting your customer’s needs, search engines are more likely to rank your content higher.
4. Make it easy to contact you
Is it obvious where users can find your contact information? If not, you’re making it harder to provide good customer support, gather valuable customer data, and obtain useful customer feedback.
I recommend having a link to your Contact page in your main menu. You could also include your contact info somewhere in the top half of your home page.
If you already make it clear how folks can contact you, great! You’re helping build customer loyalty, improve customer satisfaction, and get better customer retention rates just by making it easy for people to get in touch.
5. Don’t try to be the hero
I have to give credit for Donald Miller’s Building a Storybrand for this one. He says you’re not the hero of your company’s story — your customers are.
If you believe your company is more about your customers than yourself, you’ll focus on their story. This means they are the hero, and you are their guide.
6. Get feedback from an external source
Sometimes getting the perspective of a competent marketer outside of your organization can help you know if your site is customer-centric. We’d love to provide an assessment of your current digital content and show you how we can help you grow.
As a small business in Raleigh, North Carolina, we also offer search-engine-optimized content to help you rank higher as you focus more on your customers.
