Make It Simple
Years ago, your website was a huge part of your brand and being visible to the world. Even just having a site on the world wide web legitimized businesses. But now, everyone and their brother has a website and this has forced some changes to how Google ranks sites and how websites perform. Moreover, user preferences and habits have changed pretty dramatically.
As it relates to the coffee world, specifically the B2B coffee space, there’s been a shift that’s taken place as it relates to website use. Websites have become this functional tool for things like getting your contact info, finding out where you’re located, ordering green coffee samples and inquiring about potential projects. Your website is also used for potential buyers who likely came across you somewhere else to get a sense for the size and values of your company and to aid in making the decision of whether or not they want to work with your business.
Make it simple
So how should your website be structured if the way folks are using it has changed so dramatically over the last half a decade? It should be simple. Some of the best websites we’ve seen only have a few pages and punch well above their weight. Why? Because they have exactly what users are looking for and nothing else!
Now, understandably, there is an argument to be made that you should have an elaborate plan for SEO, paid ads, and a blogging strategy. However, what we’ve found working with 20+ coffee companies up and down the supply circle is, by and large, elaborate plans and desires are only as good as the implementation behind them. I.e. A simple website, implemented well, can perform just as good if not better than a website that has 100’s of backlinks, perfectly structured header tags, a paid ads budget and a blogging strategy that is informed by their SEO strategy.
The real point here is that whatever you do, it’s better to do 1 thing well from A to Z vs 20 things sort of ok. On the consulting side of the business (subtle plug for our sister company Pomelo) we talk about this as iterative process optimization. Meaning, take one thing, build a process around it, iterate on it and optimize said process in perpetuity. Eventually, once the process you’ve been working on has been iterated on and optimized effectively, you’ll reach a point of diminishing returns. From there, move on to the next thing that is broken and needs a process to be iterated on. This same concept is what we advocate for folks to do with their websites.
Make it easy
After just a few years, websites can very easily become a jumbled mess of links, old pages with information that’s only half true and images that don’t represent who and what the business is today. If this is where your website is today, you likely need to rip the whole thing down and start over.
When you decide to build a new website, make it as easy to use as possible. When we’re talking about easy, we’re not just saying make it a landing page. What we’re saying is that we want you to make it as easy for the buyers / users to get what they came for. Meaning, determine what they need out of your site and make it silly easy for them to get to that information, bag of coffee, green samples or whatever it is they came for in the first place.
You may be asking, “How do I know what people are wanting when they visit my site?” You could hire us to tell you, or you could do what we do…read between the lines informed by data. One of the ways we do this is to review what pages folks are spending the most time on, where they started from on your site and where their user journey ends. Meaning, look at all your pages and see what pages have the most views. That’s a pretty good indication of why folks are going to your website in the first place. If your blog page is getting the most views, it’s likely that folks are looking to you / your brand for thought leadership. If it’s the “Buy Coffee” page, they’re likely wanting to buy coffee when they’re visiting your site. Or, if they are visiting your coffee information page, they might be looking for more information on the green coffee you offer or perhaps they are really looking for how they might order green coffee samples. So have a look at where folks are going on your site, how long they spend on each page and where they leave your site. You’ll learn a lot about your site users.
Another helpful way to determine what your website visitors are looking for, is to look at their journey through your site. Meaning what page did they initially click on to get into your site and where did they go from there? Likely, they went to your home page first, but where did they go next? This implies what their intent was when they visited your site. If they went to your Home > Blog > About > Contact they are likely trying to learn about you and they’ve been convinced on the journey through your site that it might make sense to connect with you for whatever their needs are. However, if they go Home > Buy Coffee…they’re probably trying to buy some coffee. You’ll have to read between the lines a bit here but this is the real work that should be done prior to rebuilding your website. Overall, make sure your site serves your users.
Make it fast
This is a double edged sword. Google has a need for speed and they promote websites that are faster than other competitors' sites. Plus, anecdotally, users trust sites that are fast vs. slow sites. Don’t act like you’ve never smashed that back button because the website you clicked on was taking forever to load. This could be because the images on that particular page were REALLY big and caused the page to load slowly or perhaps it’s an older website that isn't used to all the new fangled, and very fast, tech we have nowadays.
Want to take your site out and see what it can do on the speedway? Drop your website’s link in here and it’ll give you some good pointers on what’s dialed in and what's slowing it down.
Make it Engaging
Bull riders only have to stay on a bull for 8 seconds to be in the running to win and that’s also all the time you get to capture someone's attention. So whatever you do, make those 8 seconds count.
Movement = good.
Pops of color leading the user's eye = good.
Clear CTA’s (Calls To Action) = good.
Long, extra wordy, hard to understand language crammed into a small area that’s hard to read and is difficult to comprehend = bad.
Make the first thing folks see on every page worth seeing.
Make it Accessible - ADA
Finally, make sure your site is ADA accessible and compliant. Likely, if you’re using a site builder like Squarespace or something like that, they have some built in structure for this but it’s not perfect. It’s important to note that Google also ranks sites that are ADA compliant and accessible higher than sites that aren’t as compliant and or accessible. So you’ll want to make sure you’ve spent some time making your site compliant. Every little bit helps your website's performance.
Feeling like your website isn’t dialed in? We’d be happy to take a look and give you some feedback. Just reach out to us via hi@thelevco.com.