Is Your Business Website Informative Enough?

 

Pexels. CCO Licensed.

Modern customers aren’t won over by promotional spiel. Instead, they are more likely to be won over by content that is informative and educational. Giving your customers lots of information about your product or service can build trust by showing off your expertise and making your business appear more transparent. Providing too little information could suggest you have something to hide or simply don’t know your product.

Informational content also has other benefits such as allowing for the inclusion of more keywords to improve search rankings. Providing lots of information on your website can also reduce time-consuming general enquiries, as well as reducing refunds and chargebacks as a result of customers accidentally purchasing an unsuitable product. To help make your website more informative, here are just some of the different measures you can take. 

Be explicit with the product specs

The ‘product specs’ are the key details about a product that a customer may want to know. Providing a comprehensive list of specs can give customers an accurate idea of what to expect and whether the product is right for them. Some of the specs to consider include:

• Ingredients/materials: What is your product made of? This can be important with things like food products and cosmetics for warning customers of allergens. Meanwhile, describing the materials of furniture could give customers an accurate idea of the quality. 

• Measurements: Customers may need to know how big the product is, as well as how heavy it is. Provide accurate dimension and weight measurements in metric and imperial to help out customers.

• Expiry details: Knowing when your product expires could be important when bulk buying certain items or purchasing products for later use. It is particularly important for foods and medicines. 

• Safety instructions: Can your product cause injury if used incorrectly? Providing safety instructions upfront could make customers more confident about using your product, as well as legally protecting you from injuries. 

• Price: One of the most important specs is of course the price. Make sure to include any additional fees upfront such shipping fees, packaging fees and VAT so that customers don’t feel deceived when they reach the checkout.

• Warranty/return options: In case customers make the wrong purchase, including information on your return policy can be useful. Warranty information can also tell customers exactly how they are protected against future faults.  

• Shipping options: It’s worth listing the different shipping options you provide upfront - along with delivery times and costs. If you offer a green shipping option this could also be worth highlighting.

• Uses/benefits: With many products, it can be important to outline the applications and benefits. For example, it could be important to outline what types of material a paint can be used on and whether it has waterproof or scratch-resistant qualities. 

You can write these product descriptions yourself or hire copywriters to create descriptions for you. Make sure to target essential keywords in these product descriptions while also keeping the language natural and engaging. 

Avoid walls of text

While it’s good to provide lots of information, you should avoid displaying it in a large uninterrupted paragraph with no spaces or headers. Explore different ways to break up information. This could include:

• Subheadings

• Bullet points

• Boxes

• Images

• Charts

• Call-to-action buttons

Breaking up information like this makes it easier to scan information for certain specs, as well as making important information (like allergy warnings) harder to overlook. 

Display customer reviews and ratings

Customer reviews and ratings are a great way to build trust. These could be included alongside each product you sell, or you could display them at the top of your homepage or as a banner at the bottom. These reviews and ratings could be submitted via your site, or you could embed reviews you’ve received on Google or Amazon. 

Consider the fact that displaying negative reviews could have a negative impact on your sales. Some companies choose to only highlight positive reviews or have a moderation feature in place because of this. Of course, it’s also possible to outweigh negative reviews and ratings by asking for reviews from all your past happy customers (just make sure to avoid asking unhappy customers to leave a review).

Use professional product images

Images can be as important for conveying information as text. They can provide an accurate visual idea of the product you are selling, build trust in your product/service or help to explain how your service works.

It’s worth hiring a product photographer to take photos of your products. This can ensure that photos look professional. With certain products, it could be important to take photos from multiple angles or provide interactive 360 degree photos. Make sure that there is a consistency to these photos in terms of the lighting, position and backdrop to allow for easy product comparison and to make your website feel orderly (a photographer will be able to help you guarantee this consistency).

Photos of your team members or workplace could help to build trust if you offer a service. You may even be able to provide photos of clients you’ve worked with or past projects. Make sure to ask for permission to use these photos from all people that are included in these photos. You could use a professional photographer to take these photos too.

Diagrams and infographics can also be a fun way to display data or processes. These can be produced by a graphic designer. They can be particularly useful for virtual companies that may not have anything worth photographing.

Stock images are another option, but you need to take care when using these. Overused stock photos will make your website look generic and impersonal. Instead, consider paying for unique stock photos and make sure they accurately portray your business. 

Add videos to provide extra information

You can also provide information using videos. This could include animated explainer videos for visually explaining processes or the inner working of complex products. Alternatively, you could include demo videos or tutorial videos to give an idea of how easy a product is to use. When producing these videos, make sure to hire a video production company to ensure good quality results. 

To help build trust, you could even consider adding behind-the-scenes videos of your work or video interviews with happy clients. These should also be shot with the help of a professional videographer. 

Give some company background info

On top of providing information on your product or service, consider providing some information on your company itself. This could include a story of how you started your business or bios of your staff members. This company info can help to build trust in your company by showing a level of transparency. Many companies reserve this information for an ‘about us’ page, but you could include it on your homepage for an upfront personal tone. Make sure to be completely honest when providing information about your company - avoid lies about how experienced you are or how many staff members you have as it could get you in trouble if the truth comes out. 

Consider a FAQs page

Providing a FAQs (frequently asked questions) page on your website could be worthwhile if you’re constantly receiving the same questions via email or phone. It could save you time responding to these enquiries and also help provide answers to customers who wouldn’t otherwise contact you. Answers to FAQs should be straightforward and accurate. While these answers can be all text, you can also embed videos and images to help answer more complex questions. 

Set up a live chat feature

A live chat for website customer assistance could be a great feature to have. This allows customers to ask questions via instant message instead of calling you or emailing you. Instant messaging can be less intimidating for some people than picking up the phone and more convenient than waiting for an email, making it a great way of answering enquiries. Of course, you do need to have someone available to respond to these instant messages quickly - the quicker you respond, the more likely you are to secure them as a customer. 

AI live chats are an alternative to using a human representative - an AI virtual assistant can answer enquiries immediately at any hour of the day. Many businesses are starting to embrace these live chats as a result, however it’s worth noting that an AI live chat is more expensive to implement and can give you less control over the responses you provide to customers. 

Provide other contact details

Having essential contact details like a phone number and email address is still important for customers that prefer this method of contact. You can display these as text, or you can add call-to-action buttons to reduce spam. 

Make sure to provide information like phone call opening hours and fees. If you have multiple phone numbers/emails for different services you can list all of these, or you can set up a central phone number and email address and then direct enquiries to the right places from here.