The Professional Services sector – e.g. Accountants, Solicitors, Auditors, Architects, Surveyors and Financial Advisers – attracts some of the best qualified and highest earning employees in the UK, but a direct consequence is these businesses have to compete against an increasing number of competitors.
If your business competes in this arena you’ll know that competition comes from many places: existing competitors adding further services or expanding into other locations, as well as ambitious new firms or practices starting out and pushing hard to get a foothold.
The ability to steal a yard or two against competitors is vital if you want to maintain market share in an increasingly crowded marketplace. One factor that helps to place your business firmly above others is how your website fulfils what prospects are looking for.
Create Design Studio has worked with a number of businesses in the professional services sector: presenting their businesses in a visually effective manner, combined with calls to action that help to turn leads into clients.
If your business sits in the Professional Services sector here are some tips to improve your website…
1) Conduct a usability survey If your website visitors cannot find what they want quickly they will go elsewhere, so ask trusted clients and people outside of your business to visit your website and provide feedback on how easy it is to use.
Chances are they may have to work harder than you realise to find out what you do and who to contact for information on specific issues.
2) Consider your content and information carefully How you view your website often differs to how prospects see it. If you’ve overloaded it with loads of technical jargon or indepth information visitors may quickly lose interest.
Website visitors need to find out if you can help them within seconds of looking at your website so content, the level of information provided and lay-out are really important if you want to encourage enquiries.
3) Review photographs and images used A picture paints a thousand words so photographs and images used on your website have to reflect the type of business you want to portray. Do you want people to perceive yours as a traditional style business or contemporary with a modern outlook?
Most professional services sector businesses deal with people, so creating the right impression about your business, the people within it and the way you deal with clients is vital to gain new enquiries.
4) Is your website helpful? Information libraries, Blogs and downloadable documents are a real catalyst for turning prospects into clients. If people find useful information on your website this often encourages them to choose your business over a competitors.
The secret is putting enough information on your website so it’s useful, without giving everything away: after all, you want prospects to contact you and book meetings, not just visit for free information.
5) How easy is it for prospects to become clients? Does your contact page include an information gathering form? Do your web pages advise people to contact you for further information? Do you offer a free initial consultation? Can people sign-up for seminars or to receive ongoing information from you?
Professional Services sector websites should be designed to perform two primary functions: Inform and Capture:
- Informing visitors about your business and how it can help them, in a format which encourages them to use you
- Capturing their details, or providing easy ways to request contact or a meeting
6) How easy is it for prospects to find your website? Have you conducted any research to see how well your business performs in search engine requests?
When your website is put together properly the design and content can make a significant difference to how well your business shows up in website searches. So if you want to be found on Google, Bing and You Tube you should consider options for improving the visibility of your website.
Making your website work harder
If your website falls short of what you need the tips above will go some way towards helping you reposition things so your website works harder for your business.
If you need advice and guidance to get your website back on track, improve results from it, or simply need a refresh to compete against your competition, please get in touch with us on 01420 549637 or email [email protected] for an initial discussion.