Quick summary: You have a dev company or agency, working in the WordPress space? Chances are your website sucks. Are you a freelancer? Probably your’s too. After checking more than 30 WordPress agencies websites, I’ve found one thing that they usually have: a great look and design. But most of them are a mess when I try […]
You have a dev company or agency, working in the WordPress space? Chances are your website sucks.
Are you a freelancer? Probably your’s too.
After checking more than 30 WordPress agencies websites, I’ve found one thing that they usually have: a great look and design.
But most of them are a mess when I try to get one answer: What they can do for me?
Is 30 not enough? Well, I’m confident enough to say that most websites do suck.
Let’s do a game. It’s called the 5 seconds test.
Do it yourself.
What do they do for their clients?
You’ll probably find like I did, that they do something with WordPress. Others make the web better. One or another says that they have a great team.
Oh, there are a few that shows some happy people below the company name. Not everyone was bad. I’ve found some great images, even an excellent video presentation.
But almost all of them fail in to deliver something critical: a clear message.
You’ll see what I mean in a few seconds.
Now let’s look at what your websites suck and what you can do for fixing it.
Have you ever thought of yourself as a real client of your agency? Probably not. Your vision is out of focus, and your briefing was a ten minutes sketch on a napkin.
I’m sure your work is outstanding. But only for other’s projects. Do it for yourself.
In this stage you have two options:
Treat yourself as a customer;
Hire someone to do your agency website.
In any case, you have to do the whole process as a customer. You have to be one. Your client or someone else.
We’ve said it before: the biggest problem is the lack of a clear message. You don’t know how to talk about what you do.
Let me say it in another way. You talk too much about yourself, your agency, the fantastic job that you and your team do. But customers don’t care about that.
They care about what you can do for them. The amazing job you can do on their website and – most important – how will make their business grow and life easier.
Get a simple and clear message. Briefly, explain how you can change their life. You’re a doctor. Hit in the pain point of you customer. And deliver the therapy.
Make an excellent briefing with yourself and your team. Ask all the questions and give all the answers. Now you are your customer.
Put the great features you made and talk about the benefits. Your customers don’t want to know if you have an exceptional design and lightweight contact form. But he cares if it avoids any lost contact.
Answer your client needs in your website.You’ve launched the site. Big party, some relief. It’s done.
That was the problem.
Like you and your agency, the site is a living thing. It needs to be updated. Needs care. Needs that same thing you told your customer about the fabulous website you’ve made for them.
The problem is that you started another project and completely forgot to feed your site, week after week.
Give some love to your site at least once a month. Visit those pages, update the portfolio, publish a post.
About that…
You made some posts in the early days then something got in the way. Because you lack inspiration, laziness, or other things you stopped writing posts. Maybe one or two shorter ones, Twitter-inspired, and nothing more. Not even a case study.
Create a routine: write one post per week. You can divide the process into several days. One for choosing the topic, other for gather elements, other to write and a last one to edit. Commit yourself to this. You use WordPress which started as a blog platform.
Make it relevant for your readers. Among them are other developers, designers, even customers, and prospects.
Don’t like to write? Record a video each week.
Don’t like the idea? Fine, hire someone that writes for you.
WordPress is not only for sites. It’s to blog too.I bet you talk a lot about user experience, right? But do you talk to some users of your site? Did you make them questions? Have you tried the 5 seconds challenge?
Talk to users. Not a random user. Choose those you think are your target. Do the 5-second test. Take notes. And make changes to your website.
Let’s use the power of imagination. Imagine that someone who visits your website is going on a date with you. Did you notice that you’re almost proposing marriage?
You: “Hi, welcome to my site.”
They: “Hey, I just wander, see what you do.”
You: “Ok, do you want to marry me?”
They: (no answer, they went out)
Make a tour guide for your site users. Explain, don’t just say. Create landing pages for each of your services. Use non-technical language.
Show what you can do. And make clear why you did it.
Be a friend, first.
Your site sucks because you want to get married and have children in the first dateMake your agency website. Your. Not some arbitrary site. Fill it with personality. Have a right, simple message and not some lousy slogan.
Try to appeal to your customer’s story even before you know it. Do research.
Be social. Share regularly on Facebook and Twitter. Have a newsletter and send it, at least once a month.
All of this process isn’t too much. You’re just doing your job.
