Business Management: Do you need to update your web site?
An optimized web site can be an extremely powerful tool.
By Kevin Bertrand
Web sites aren’t just for the big guys anymore. Let’s face it. By this point, having a web site for your rental business is a must. When it comes to knowing if your web site is “good” or not is where it becomes less clear. The truth is, it doesn’t always matter if you have the most beautiful website in town or not.
However, you do need to have a functional web site with a smooth user experience.
An optimized web site can be an extremely powerful tool for local businesses. In fact, 80 percent of individuals use online searches to find local businesses and services. To get started, you should know what your objectives are and then work on optimizing your site to reflect them.
Here are some tips to easily optimize your web site so you can win more jobs and rentals online:
Make sure it’s responsive
That’s just a fancy way of saying needs to look good on mobile devices. Because more people make Google searches from their phones and tablets than desktops, if your website isn’t responsive, your business can lose out on this segment.
In 2015, Google introduced its mobile-friendly algorithms that “punish” non-responsive sites in its search rankings, meaning less-responsive web sites will show up lower in the search results.
Having a less-responsive web site can cripple a company’s online presence, especially when 47 percent of internet surfers click on one of the first three listings.
When visitors come to your web site, you have less than nine seconds to make an impactful impression before they hit the back button and go to one of the big guy’s sites.
Use calls to actions and concise copy
It’s easy to get too close to our designs, and when we do, we can be blind to the hiccups in the user experience. Imagine you’re a prospective renter visiting a company’s web site for the first time. If the information you are looking for is buried in thick paragraphs or the user has to search through multiple pages just to request a quote, the user will likely give up and move on.
Visitors are pulled into web pages by simple but captivating headlines and images. Check out uber.com, Uber’s homepage. It offers concise headlines that tell visitors exactly what it is about.
Call-to-actions can drive visitors to relevant areas of your website to get specific information.
Good web sites make great salesmen
Your web site is your salesman that is on-call 24/7/365. When a customer wants to know about rental rates for a generator at 3 a.m., your site will be there.
Most small rental business web sites are built on popular platforms like WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or have been custom-developed by a design firm. These are a great place to start, but it can be difficult to set them up to process transactions, review contracts and pay invoices easily.
If you are already using an asset management system to organize and track your equipment, then your web site could be doing all that and more.
Rental companies that use SRM or RentalLogic, for example, are able to build online rental stores through the GateWay add-on that works with their rental management system.
So when a customer is looking to rent a generator at 3 a.m., they will see the most up-to-date pricing with any special rates associated with their account applied.
Kevin Bertrand is marketing associate at Texada software.
Copyright 2019 Urbain Communications, LLC. All rights reserved. Contact curbain@urbaincomm.com for permission to reprint or rebroadcast all or part of this article.
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