As a wedding directory owner, I get the honor to see many wedding
vendor websites on a daily basis. Not only do I see my current
customer's websites, but I also get to see some of my future customer's
sites. Many times, when creating a directory for a certain geographic
location, I populate the sites with some wedding businesses from that
particular area.
Over the last week or so I noticed a
few wedding professional websites that are not up to par. I am sure
some of these business owners are asking themselves why they are not
getting leads from their website. After looking through their website,
it is pretty obvious why they are not getting good leads. I am sure
they are really not aware of these small mistakes they are making. Some
of the mistakes are very basic and hopefully they are reading this
post, and might be able to take some action on their website to improve
their leads and their visitor experience.
One of the
first things I encountered over the past week, was wedding vendors
without their location anywhere on their website. At the very minimum
you need your city and state of your location of the area you serve. If
you travel and service the entire country, then at least put your
primary business location prominently on your website, at least in the
footer. You are losing out one at least one or two weddings without
this information on your site. If you are paranoid or run your business
from your home, you do not need your complete address, but at the very
least your city and state.
The next thing I found that
was missing was contact or call to action information. On a few sites I
found nothing for contacting the business. On some sites all I seen
was a phone number, and found it quite by accident. A call to action or
link to a contact page should be on each and every single page of your
website, so the customers can contact you.
Email
addresses were another big thing that were seen on sites. I cannot
count how many email addresses were Gmail and Yahoo generic email
addresses. I do not care how professional your company is, if you are
sporting a Yahoo or Gmail email account on your website, you look
unprofessional. There, I said it. Nobody wants to hear it, but your
professional perception grade gets decrease by 20% by displaying a
Yahoo, Gmail, Rocketmail, or any other type of email address, other than
that of your domain name. You own web sever space for your website,
for God sakes, use your domain name in your e mail address. If your web
hosting package does not have a basic email package, get another host
for your web site. At the very least you should have an email address
like info@myweddingbusiness.com. Many people prefer the more personal
approach and use joe@myweddingbusiness.com, and that is great also.
But for goodness sakes, get rid of the joesmithdj@yahoo.com. You
instantly look like a fly by night business.
Lastly
in this post, I want to cover the basics of images on your websites.
Now Disc Jockey's are the best for this subject, because DJ's got great
big egos (yes I was a DJ so I can say this). If you are catering to a
bride coming to your web site, then your home page should have images of
a bride dancing and having a great time with all of her guests at her
reception. Do not have images of yourself on your home page....no one
cares how beautiful you think you are. Do not have the stock images of
all of your professional equipment and lighting on your home page. And
lastly, most brides do not know the difference between a Bose and hose,
so don't put it on your home page. If you want some self promotion of
all of the equipment you spend money on, have an equipment page with all
of that stuff on it. Granted that page will be like wetting yourself
in dark pants, but at least you have the warm feeling of having your
equipment purchases on your website.
Brides are coming
to your website to get information about you. Your home page should
answer at least the initial questions she may have. Make your home page
the best impression of your business and get into details in some of
your other pages. There is no magic number of words, but a person
should get a good idea of your business in 10 seconds or less. Make
your home page attractive with good images of a bride having fun,
because, simply, that is what she is after. She doesn't want to see
you, she doesn't want to see your equipment, she wants to see what her
wedding reception is going to be like.
I could probably
write fifty posts on how to improve your website because there are a
million ways to do just that. But we will start with at least the
basics and hopefully this will help you in your journey to a successful
wedding business.
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