As a local business it’s important to have a website that converts visitors into leads and customers at a high rate. This will allow you to get the most bang for your buck when it comes time to start advertising. 

In our day and age, it’s crucial for your business to have a website and since most of your visitors will be coming to your website via their phone, it’s also crucial that your website is mobile friendly. 

That’s the first step in creating a local business website that converts. Fortunately, most website builders will create mobile responsive websites. This doesn’t mean it’s foolproof however. You still need to make sure your mobile website is really dialed in before you start advertising. Make sure everything looks right and flows well when browsing your website on a phone.

Some website builders make mobile responsive design easier than others of course. I personally recommend using Webflow. It’s free to get started and you only have to pay when you’re ready to deploy your website to a custom domain.It has a learning curve but it’s easily one of the most powerful ‘no-code’ website builders on the market today. It allows you to create beautiful custom websites and landing pages. Their training videos are fantastic and they have a lot of beautiful templates you can quickly modify to create a professional & modern website quickly.

Testimonials and/or Examples of Work

Whatever services you’re offering, testimonials are one of the strongest assets you can leverage on your website to increase the number of leads and customers you get. This is why it’s crucial to have some type of system in place for collecting testimonials whenever you can.

Something like GatherKudos would help you to start collecting positive reviews and negate negative ones. If you rather not pay a monthly price for this type of service then you can just make something similar using Webflow.

If you don’t have testimonials, you should try and show examples of your work if it’s applicable to your business.

If you can add both testimonials and examples of work then that’s most ideal.

Your website can still convert without testimonials or examples of work but it’s going to make your job much easier if you have either one or both.

Website Performance & Page Load Speed

Your website should load relatively fast. Here’s a great image showing how pagespeed can impact conversions on your website:

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You can use this free tool to see how your website performs and it provides suggestions on how you can improve pagespeed.

Optimizing your website for pagespeed can easily become an obsession but so long as you load your website from the same location as your target audience and it loads fast enough for you then you’re probably good. 

With that said, here are the 2 main ways you can optimize your website for pagespeed: 

1. Make sure any images you have on your website are optimized so they load fast. The main ways to do this is to convert them to webp or jpg instead of using high resolution png file formats for example. A free tool I use to achieve this is called Squoosh.
   
   
2. You also want to keep scripts to a minimum on your website. The more scripts you have, the longer your page takes to load typically. 

A Relevant Headline That “Hooks”

No need for a clever or cute headline on your website. It’s better if you just state clearly the service you offer and the location you’re offering it. This lets the user know immediately they’re on the right website if for example they’re looking for X in X town/city.

They then will scroll through to learn more about your business, where you’ll sell them on everything else your service includes.

When To List Your Pricing

It doesn’t always make sense to list your pricing on your website. Sometimes it’s better to have them inquire about pricing by submitting a contact form or calling you.

Sometimes, however, it does make sense to list your pricing and that’s when your price is part of your unique selling proposition. If you have some of the most competitive prices in town vs your competitors, then you want to make sure that’s clearly stated on your website and exactly what the prices are. You may even want to include it in your headline.

If you don’t have super competitive pricing, then instead you’ll want to make sure you emphasize how your services go above and beyond when compared to your “cheaper” competitors. This way you’re targeting people in the market who are more concerned with quality of service than they are with the price being the cheapest.

Clear, Low Commitment Call to Actions

If you pick the wrong call to actions, you can really destroy your websites ability to convert. I had a client once that had all the boxes ticked for a high converting website except their call to action was “Get Started”. This is too high commitment at this point of the sales process. It may seem innocent enough but since this was a pool construction business, the website visitors weren’t ready to “Get Started” yet. They wanted to inquire about cost or had another question before they were ready to get started. I changed his call to action to “Get a FREE Quote” and his website started converting really well.

It just goes to show how important your call to action is. You want to just make it easy for people to “raise their hand” to show they’re interested in your services and let them easily contact you to inquire further or get a free quote or ask whatever question they might have before they do business with you. This can be via a form submission or a phone call.

There are always exceptions to this and I have seen a Med Spa do really well with a booking widget where visitors could book an appointment AND pay for it all in one go.

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