Once we have built a beautiful new website and it starts to pick up traction with Google, the next step is to get your customers to get in touch and start making enquiries and placing orders. But website design is not a cure all to get your customers involved, its always good to find ways in which you can communicate either directly or indirectly with your customers.

Online chat

The most instant and direct method would be to integrate online chat software onto your website. We’ve previously talked about Tidio, the instant chat messaging system which sits on our site and lets our visitors get in touch directly with any questions. Online chat can be a great way for your visitors to get in touch with you, but also a way for you to communicate with someone who is currently viewing your website. Perhaps someone has been on the page for a specific product for some time, and may have questions about it? Using online chat tools, you could send a message asking if they need any assistance and to help close the sale, just like a retail assistant may do in a physical shop. If someone has left your page open and gone to do something else, then an audible ping and pop up message might be frustrating and could be seen as though you having been spying on their movements around the website. Chatbots could be a simple solution, by introducing themselves as a robot, they hopefully won’t feel as intrusive and would save you a lot of time watching your site to see if someone is looking at it.

Targeted emails

Once you have an email address from your customer, be it from an enquiry, order or collected from your chatbot, you could contact your customers directly via email. Keep in mind GDPR requirements and that visitors who are providing information will need to opt in to being kept on record for marketing newsletters. But there may be simple way that you could reach out to a repeat customer with a special deal or contact someone who had previously sent an enquiry in a contact form about a service or product you didn’t offer at the time.

Blog posts

Blogs can provide a way of talking to your customers. While not focused and talking to a specific visitor, it’s still an outlet for you to provide a more personal voice than the rest of the site may have. It can be a place to talk about upcoming events that your business is involved in, showcase recent projects, or to put your professional opinion on upcoming changes to your industry.  Blogs can be used in a multitude of ways and can provide a boost for SEO as well by showing Google that your website is expanding with fresh, organic content.

Websites provide a snapshot of your business, in one condensed, easily accessible place. As important as it is to showcase your business and have the right tone and feel, the site needs to serve your needs. Your visitors need to have a way to find the answer to their questions, but its important that they can communicate with you to find out more about your services and to place an order. There are times when just waiting for incoming messages are not enough, and a more proactive approach needs to be taken to let your visitors know what’s happening. If you’re not sure how best to interact with your website visitors, then have a chat with our team and we can see what would be a good fit.