Have you ever considered what your website is supposed to do? Just about every business has a website but not all of them are truly functional. Ideally, your website serves as the backbone for your marketing — and anything you do to market your business should contribute to one goal: bringing in more clients for your business. 

Your website is most commonly the last step of your marketing funnel — think of it as your 24/7 salesperson. So how can you tell if your website is doing its job?

Get the basics right

Your website’s quality correlates to traffic from organic search (SEO). A high-quality website will work hard for you, so it pays to take the time to get it right.

If you have optimized your website for search, ensure your sales pages include important keywords — both service-based keywords AND location-based keywords (think “Dog Training Classes in CITY, State“). This allows Google to pinpoint your location so you’re more likely to show up when someone asks Google for “Dog trainers near me”.

SEO doesn’t stop with your key pages such as Home, About, and Services pages. You can boost your SEO by blogging consistently too.

Blogging offers a chance to create many more pieces of content on your website, each focused on important keywords to bring in more people to your site. 

If you’re looking to blog for the purposes of bringing new people in via SEO, you’ll want to think about creating content around both training specific keywords and LOCATION specific keywords (assuming you’re a local business). Try writing articles on things like the “Most Pet Friendly Restaurants in CITY” or “Best Pet Friendly Outings in CITY State.”

Once you’ve tweaked your SEO to be the best it can be, it’s time to see if it’s working for you. SEO can take some time to work its magic so don’t panic if things aren’t looking fabulous straight out the gate.

Analyzing your website traffic

Do you know how much traffic your website gets, and where that traffic is coming from? If not, you can find out by checking your Google Analytics. (You do have Google Analytics, don’t you? It’s a key part of optimizing your marketing strategy so don’t put off setting it up!)

Once you’re in Google Analytics, take a look at how much traffic your website is getting, and whether that traffic is converting into clients or sign ups.

In general, the industry-agnostic average conversion rate sits somewhere around 2%. That said, dog trainers usually have a slightly higher conversion rate, since they’re a service-based business and not usually an e-commerce website. Still, it can be useful to figure out if your site is converting better or worse than 2% of your traffic.

To calculate your conversion rate, take the number of contacts you’ve had reach out via your website in the last month and divide that by the number of people who have visited your website in the last month. That will give you a decimal point. Multiple that by 100 to get a %. 

If you find you’re converting less than 2% of your website traffic, that means it’s time to think about whether: 

• the traffic coming to your website is full of people who aren’t the right leads
• your website itself is due for a redesign 

Most of the dog training businesses we work with see between 500-2000 website visits a month with more visits if they focus mostly on classes and fewer visits if they focus mostly on behavior sessions or private lessons. 

Once you’ve determined whether your site is getting enough traffic, and what your conversion rate is, it’s time to look at how to improve that number if necessary.

Do you have convincing copy?

The content of your website, in addition to ranking well with Google, needs to be convincing for real, live human beings.

To do this it should give all the information a visitor needs to make a decision. And it needs to be relatable and understandable, so it connects with your reader. You want your visitor to read your copy and say to themselves “Oh my! That’s me. This trainer totally understands my problems AND seems to know their stuff! I need to work with them right now!”

How do you do that? By writing your copy in the actual language your clients use. Not sure how? Look at how clients describe their problems on your contact form or in your intake questionnaires. Steal their exact phrases and descriptions — go ahead and take the words right out of their mouths. 

Comb your copy for industry-specific jargon that’s snuck in and remove it. Really think about if there are terms on your website your clients won’t understand before they hire you. 

You can even ask a non-trainer friend to read through it for you and note anything they don’t instantly understand? The curse of knowledge means you’ll be unlikely to pick all the jargon yourself because to you, it all makes perfect sense.

Copy is a conversation 

Ever had a chat with someone who does nothing but talk about themselves? Gets old real fast, doesn’t it? Don’t be that person on your website.

That means, even though it’s your website, it shouldn’t be about YOU. It should be about what you can do for your clients — think through the content from their perspective. Is it clear how you can help solve their problems? 

If you imagine your copy is one side of a conversation — one where your visitor asks questions and you answer them — it’s easier to get the balance right.

You can find more about writing convincing copy here.

Once your copy is all polished and professional, it’s time to look at your website’s design. 

User experience (UX) for conversion

A big issue with many websites is they look amazing but just don’t work from the user’s perspective. This is where user testing can really help. User testing can be very expensive and complicated or simple and cost very little. 

What you’re going to do is ask someone to test the UX (user experience) of your site.

How to do it:

Get someone who’s not familiar with your website. If you can, get multiple people to run through the testing for you. That will give you a better idea of what are true issues and what might be personal preferences.

Once you have your testers, sit them down individually and ask them to find key bits of information and undertake specific (simple) tasks with it. 

Record them doing it or run a screen recording with the mic on so you can see what they do and if/when they struggle. The mic is used to record their comments and questions as they work through your tasks. 

Key questions you need answered: 

• How many clicks does it take to get from any page of the website to a place where they can hire you? 
• Does the menu make sense — are the items in the order they expect?
• Can they quickly work out what services you offer?
• Can they quickly find where you’re located?
• Can they work out the next step if they want to work with you?
• If there is a form to submit, do they know if their message was successfully sent? And what to expect after sending it?
• Are there buttons where they expect to find buttons? 
• Is it easy to get from place to place within your site without having to constantly go back to the home page or main menu?

Design check

If your site passes the usability test, the next thing to check is the overall design. Visitors expect to find a visually pleasing, modern design when they click through to a website. 

Sites today are skewing more toward white space and neutrals, with pops of color. Take a look at Vital K9 for an excellent example. 

Your homepage should immediately make it clear that you offer dog training, what kind of training you do, and where you’re located. Your whole site also needs to be representative of your business, your branding, and your business personality. 

Additionally, your site needs to make your ideal client feel at home and show you work with people like them. With that in mind, are the types of breeds you work with shown? What about the types of clients you work with? Is it clear who your ideal client is?  

For example, if you work with young families with children, have pictures of families and kids enjoying time with their dog. Or if you prefer more mature clients, have images of retirees with their dogs. Pictures speak louder than words so showing who you work with is more important than you might realize. 

It’s critical your website looks professional and up to date. But it can be hard to assess this yourself so ask your usability tester to review the following areas and give you feedback:

• On a scale of 1-10, how professional does your website appear to them?
• Are all the photos properly cropped and framed without body parts being cut off?
• Are things crowded — too close together, with not enough white space? Or so spread out everything looks disconnected?
• Are there too many fonts? (Overdoing fonts can make a site look cluttered and disorganized. Stick to one font for your body text and a complimentary one for your headers. Find out how to choose complimentary fonts here.)
• Are the fonts too small? Remember mobile screens are small and are often viewed in less-than-ideal conditions. 
• Does the site work well on mobile as well as desktop?

Not sure if your website needs an overhaul? 

It can be difficult to objectively know whether your site needs a revamp or not. Maybe you’re not getting the number of clients you need? But even though you’ve worked through the topics in this blog post, you still can’t pin down why things aren’t functioning as you’d like.

You don’t need to struggle alone! We can help — get in touch to schedule a free call.