5 Crucial Elements of an Effective Offline Business Website

Companies, Marketing

A website is crucial to any kind of business, don’t you think?

While offline businesses interact with their customers in person, it is easy for owners to dismiss the need for a website.

They may assume that a website is unnecessary to the growth of their business. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A business website is as important as a store-front to an offline business.

Here are a few reasons why:

It allows customers to easily get information about your business such as address, phone number, business hours, product/service details, etc.
It helps potential customers find your business through local searches.
Help your business generate leads by giving potential customers a platform to share their contact details.
A website provides valid social proof that contributes to you credibility.
Serves as a channel through which you can share information to keep customers in-the-know about your business.
Gives you a footing in the online space to help drive traffic to your business.
And much more…

With all these benefits, it’s hard to say no to owning a website as an offline business.

However, you are thinking of getting your business a website, there are 5 crucial elements your business website must have.

These elements are:

Business Contact Information

One limitation of offline businesses is that customers can only interact with them when they find it physically. Having a website increases the reach of your business to a wider audience.

And when they do, you want to make sure they do not leave without engaging your business. One of the best ways to do this is providing vital business details on your website. Information such as contact details (email and phone number) make it easy for potential customers to reach out to your business, even before they visit.

Additionally, while providing business contact information, it is important to put them in the right spot on your website. One of the best spots to place your business contact details in the Contact Us page.

Be sure to:

Add your business contact information to the footer of your website.
Imbed a Google map to your physical address on your site.
Include your address in your website’s meta titles and descriptions.

To learn more, check out this post on 4 effective local SEO tips to promote your business.

Location Pages

For offline businesses that have multiple outlets, it is important to create a separate page to list your addresses. In addition, to displaying your primary address at the footer of your site, you want to design a location page for customers to find the outlet closest to them.

For each address you list on your location page, be sure to include details like opening hours, contact info, Google map, etc. This is a crucial element because it helps your website rank better on search results, which is great for organic traffic.

Customer Testimonials/Reviews

If you want to put your brand on the internet, you want people to trust you.

You want them to believe that they will be happy doing business with you. And the best way to do this is through customers reviews.

Customer reviews are the most powerful social proof that your business offers quality solutions. And so, putting them up on your website gives potential customers the confidence to buy from you.

According to BrightLocal, 86% of consumers who shop local read customer reviews first before doing so. This makes reviews all the more important for attracting new business.

A Lead Generation Form

In addition to giving vital information about your business, your website should help you generate leads. It should help you collect contact information from your customers such as email address or phone number.

For your website to function in this capacity, you need a lead generation form.

A lead generation form is a tool for collecting details such as names and email addresses from customers. It can also allow you collect details like birthdays, gender, phone numbers, etc. The information collected from your customers can be used to build an email list, which will allow you send personalized messages to them.

A lead generation form doesn’t need to be overly long.

You only need to collect name and email address most times. Having a lead generation form that is too long will defeat the intended purpose and turn customers off. You can collect other details through Wi-Fi marketing tools like SpotOn Wi-Fi.

Valuable Lead Magnet

To catch a mouse, you need cheese. I don’t mean that disparagingly.

I am only saying that to make website visitors give you their personal details, you have to give something in exchange.

That something is called a lead magnet.

A lead magnet could be an e-book, a coupon, percentage off deal, free consultation, etc. But it has to be of value to your potential customers otherwise it won’t pass for an incentive. Adding a lead magnet to your website will increase the number of and speed of signups on your website.

Furthermore, you want to make sure that your lead magnet is clearly explained on your site. You don’t want your customers guessing what the lead magnet really is.

In conclusion…

A website is crucial for your offline business as it is for online businesses.

And so, you want to be sure it has all these 5 important elements if you want it to be profitable for you.

To put it in perspective, your website serves as the face of your business before customers see your actual business offline. Therefore, you need to incorporate these elements into your business website.

Remember the tool I mentioned earlier?

In addition to your lead generation form, SpotOn Wi-Fi can help you collect customer data in real-time. Want to know how often your customers visit? Looking to understand your customers buying behaviour? Want to know how many male and female customers do you have? Want more result from your marketing? Need to send more personalized messages to your customers?

SpotOn Wi-Fi allows you collect accurate customer data that answer these questions and more. It will be a real game changer for your brick-n’-mortar business.

Interested yet?

Reach out to us and let us show you the full potential of our tool.