81% of people do online research before making a large purchase.
As the first point of contact for most prospects, your agency website needs to focus on building trust and authority. Read on for an overview of critical considerations, actionable advice, and plug-ins to help you catch your target audience’s attention, fuel their interest, and generate leads.
Choosing your CMS
When it comes to choosing a CMS, most will opt for WordPress, which provides the option for your website to be hosted or self-hosted.
Choosing the hosted option means you won’t need to download software updates, pay for hosting or manage a web server, but some restrictions might harm your website’s ability to generate leads in the long run.
Even when taking the DIY route, customizable plug-ins and templates make integrating all the features you want easy. This means you will have 100% control over your agency website’s appearance, functionality, marketing tools, and optimization. Then, all you need to get going is suitable third-party hosting and a domain name.
Have a separate landing page for each service
In most cases, a single landing page is not personalized enough to cater to the person who clicks through to your website, and they will soon lose interest.
Most potential clients will be looking for something specific or just one aspect of the total package you offer. For this reason, you will need to produce targeted landing pages for every service your agency provides.
As a rule, high converting landing pages include the following elements:
- A killer headline
- Subheadings that outline the benefit of choosing your agency
- Scannable copy
- Description of what your service includes
- Social proof
- A clear call to action
What plug-in should I use? Beaver Builder is one of the most popular WordPress plug-ins for building a landing page. It’s compatible with any theme, offers total control over page layout, and its drag and drop interface makes it extremely easy to arrange the individual elements as you wish. And to help you get started, it comes with dozens of ready-made templates that you can adopt straight out of the box.
Use case studies to tell your story.
When converting prospects into clients, examples of your work are probably the most crucial aspect of your agency website. Case studies provide the backbone of any effective online portfolio. Combining storytelling with facts and figures, they show prospects what it’s like to work with your agency and how you’ve helped other businesses achieve excellent results.
To create persuasive case studies for your marketing agency, you will need to:
- Define the clients you want to attract
- Address pain points
- Frame your service as the best solution
- Use data to illustrate key points
- Make it visually appealing
- Add testimonials and other forms of social proof
- Provide clear next steps
What plug-in should I use? Testimonials Showcase offers a user-friendly display of your projects, making it ideal for case studies. It also includes a generous suite of features, including grid and slider layouts, rich snippet compatibility, star ratings, and front-end submission forms. You can create quotes on a different page and then link to a more detailed case study to spread trust signals evenly around your site.
Define your value proposition
The value proposition is arguably the most critical aspect of any website’s messaging. Put, a value proposition is a statement that summarizes why a consumer should choose your service over a competitor. The value proposition should be the first thing people on your homepage, and, ideally, it should echo on all the most essential pages of your website.
A compelling value proposition:
- It is short
- Addresses your target audience directly
- Explains how your services will solve their problems
- Describes the end benefit to the user
- Tells customers why they should choose you over a competitor
An ineffective value proposition:
- Is long and rambling
- Includes technical jargon people outside your industry won’t understand
- Is it too service or product focused
- It is aimed at too many target markets
- Tries to squeeze in every single customer pain point and benefit
Still not sure how to create your value proposition? Try explaining your agency’s uniqueness to a friend or colleague in 30-60 seconds. Chances are, you will naturally find yourself using robust, simple, and concise language to describe your business and the benefits you are offering, which is the ideal combination for a compelling value proposition.
Focus on the user experience (UX)
Although UX is one of the essential parts of creating a website, it’s also one of the most commonly overlooked. While it’s true that visual design elements are crucial to nailing that all-important first impression, it’s UX that ultimately shapes a user’s emotions and attitudes about a website. In other words, the visual design hooks visitors, while UX convinces them to stay and listen to what you have to say.
Four UX principles to remember when launching a successful agency website include:
Users scan rather than read – First-time visitors to a website typically start checking to evaluate whether it contains the information they are looking for. Keeping sentences short and using clear subheadings, images, bullet points, and readable fonts are essential for enhancing reader engagement.
Prioritize clarity and simplicity – Don’t make it difficult for users to find your website’s content. If you want them to click your call to action buttons, make them stand out and use action-orientated text. Avoid clutter by differentiating page elements with whitespace and colors that complement and contrast.
Implement a clear visual hierarchy – Arrange the elements of each page in a way that implies importance. This ensures the visitor focuses on the correct information in the proper order. There are many ways you can use visual hierarchy to your advantage, but one of the most simple is ordering your headline, subheading, body copy, and calls to action by size.
Simplify structure and navigation – Overwhelming visitors to your website is a surefire way to persuade them to leave again. Don’t crowd your website with content; make sure navigation is intuitive. Use easy and familiar ways to help users get around your website, for example, tabbed navigation, breadcrumbs, and hamburger menu design.
What plug-in should I use? UX affects so many aspects of your website that it’s impossible to pick one or two. From enhancing site speed and load time to boosting security, read our list of the must-have WordPress plug-ins for a professional website.
There’s a huge amount to consider when launching an agency. Nevertheless, getting your website right is one of the most important. Fail in this area, and you risk losing your prospects’ trust, leads drying up, and your agency is never recovering. Follow the advice above, build a WordPress website to be proud of, and you stand a much better chance of making your new venture a success.
