{5:55 minutes to read} As I’ve mentioned before, if a visitor comes to your website who’s a potential client, and they don’t find the information they’re looking for, they’re likely going to go searching the Internet for somewhere else to find it. You can just assume that.
Don’t send visitors away from your website! Asking them to contact you for basic information about a specific topic that is included in your profession is paramount to sending them away—if they can’t find what they are looking for on your website.
I’ve always considered an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) vital to be included on a website. I would define an FAQ answer as anywhere from a sentence to maybe a couple of paragraphs. Anything longer than that, and we’ve got a blog article. Anything longer than the 3 to 5 paragraphs would be potentially a case study or simply a more in-depth article—all of which are completely appropriate and potentially useful and valuable to your visitors.
If you don’t have an FAQ, or your FAQ answers stop as people are just getting started, you are taking the chance again of them deciding to look elsewhere to get further information.
In numerous interactions with clients over the last year or so, there’s been a lot of discussion about topics for blog articles. One of the things I keep coming back to and trying to drill home to our clients: Don’t forget the nuts and bolts. If somebody’s coming to your website, they’re either trying to get information on you or, more likely, they’re trying to become educated on a problem, concern, or life issue—whether it be legal, financial or personal.
If you’re a professional services practice or company, your potential audience has questions and concerns that they are seeking answers to before they pick up the phone or send an email. The natural assumption is that contacting you directly is risky. By doing so, they’re potentially putting themselves in a position where they need to commit financial resources, time and/or energy that they’re not ready to commit to by engaging with you directly.
Use your website to that advantage. Get the information on your website that they want so they can consume it at their time, pleasure, and leisure—whether that be two o’clock in the morning or four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. General information should always be available on your website; remember the internet is 24/7. After all, this is one of the main advantages of having a website in the first place.
What information do your prospective clients need to know in order to make a decision about who is best to help them resolve whatever it is that they’re addressing? Answering that question, will give you topics to populate your FAQs and blogs for some time to come.
Most prospective clients need to have a level of understanding of a particular topic before they’re going to engage with a professional to take it to the next level. After all, they don’t want to appear naïve when they finally speak to you.
If they’re coming to your website and they’re finding well-written articles, great. But if those articles aren’t directly addressing their concern, needs or problem, and they can’t find the information on your website, they’re going to go somewhere else. They may really like your articles, but they’re still likely to go somewhere else to get “informed” on their specific issue. Maybe they plan to come back to you after they’ve found the information they want—but as they say—once they leave your website, “life happens,” and they may never come back.
It’s a Catch-22. People assume that information online is for free. If you don’t play into that, you shoot yourself in the foot. If you take 20 minutes—and I suggest you do it right now—and write down every question that a prospective client has ever asked you, you’ve got a whole bunch of topics at the end of that 20 minutes. That’ll keep you busy for the next year answering those questions—in FAQs, in blog articles, and potentially in more in-depth pieces.
Why did someone come to your website in the first place?
They have questions.
They have concerns.
They have a problem that they’re trying to solve.
They need to become informed.
Can they get that specific info on your website?
Mark Bullock
Telephone: (631) 754-0800
Email: Mark@phoneBlogger.net
Website:phoneBlogger.net
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