These posts live on this blog because they don’t really belong on my main website. They’re more observations from doing this for a very long time.
I meet clients in all sorts of businesses and, almost without exception, they’re good at what they do. You’d hope so. If you’re setting up as a plumber, accountant, window cleaner, personal trainer or whatever else, you presumably know how to do the job.
There are exceptions, obviously. We’ve all met them.
But generally, being good at what you do isn’t the problem.
The problem is assuming everyone else knows you’re brilliant.
Google Doesn’t Know You’re Brilliant
I hear this quite a lot:
“I have a website. Why am I not getting any leads?”
Because having a website doesn’t automatically mean people will find it.
It never really did.
Before websites, if you managed to call yourself AAA Plumbing in the Golden Pages, you appeared before Zelda Plumbing. Same basic idea. Being good at plumbing had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Google works differently now, but the principle hasn’t changed much.
Google doesn’t know you’re brilliant. More importantly, the person searching doesn’t know either.
They’re searching for something they need.
People Aren’t Studying Your Website
I’ve done this many times for clients. They already have a perfectly decent main website. In parallel, we might build another small website or two focused on very specific services or searches.
It doesn’t work for every business, but when it does, the reason is fairly simple.
We focus on what the person is actually looking for.
Your main website can tell people how brilliant you are. There’s nothing wrong with that. Have the nice photography, testimonials, company history and all the rest.
But Mary in Mayo doesn’t particularly care.
Neither does Mary in Dublin.
She Googles what she needs. She clicks a result. She checks that you appear capable of doing the job. Then she rings you or sends an email.
She probably isn’t spending 20 minutes admiring your gallery.
I’m not a huge fan of galleries, by the way.
Galleries don’t ring the phone.
People do.
A Nice Website Still Needs Visitors
This probably sounds slightly bitter and twisted. It isn’t meant to.
My job these days is about more than building nice websites. Yes, we still build them, and they should look professional and be easy to use.
But I can also show you lovely websites that get practically no business.
That isn’t necessarily because there’s anything wrong with the website.
Nobody is finding it.
A business getting 10 clicks a month doesn’t have a user experience problem. It has a traffic problem.
You can spend another week changing fonts, moving photographs around and arguing about whether a button should be slightly darker blue.
It won’t matter if nobody sees it.
Sometimes You Don’t Need a Website at All
Not every business needs leads from its website.
Some companies are already busy enough. Their website is simply somewhere customers can check who they are and what they do.
I recently had my patio done by a guy with no website.
Naturally, being me, I asked him why.
He laughed.
He told me he’d been booked solid for years.
Fair enough.
He doesn’t need a website. He needs more workers.
That’s another blog post.
Get People There First
I’m not saying forget the logo, photography, design or good copy. All of those things matter.
That’s user experience.
But there has to be a user before there can be a user experience.
If hardly anyone is visiting your website, the priority is getting people there and giving them a very obvious way to contact you.
That might mean Google Search, Google Maps, Google Ads, Facebook, TikTok or a combination of them.
Then make it ridiculously easy to ring, email or enquire.
Build a nice website, absolutely.
Just don’t assume people will find it because you’re brilliant at what you do.
Google hasn’t a clue.