How To Develop A Better Website For Your Consultancy Practice
A pamphlet website isn't enough, your website should be an indispensable resource.
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Too Many Consultant’s Websites Are Poor Pamphlets
If you imagine a typical website for a consultant, you’re probably imagining:
A template website hosted on Wix/Squarespace etc...
A big hero photo of the consultant accompanied by a one-sentence description of what they do (typically in the form of “I will help you…”).
A list of services.
Three to five testimonials
A contact page.
And that’s often pretty much it(!)
This doesn’t give visitors the information they need. It’s not good enough.
I suspect many consultants are overly eager to get started on other promotional activities that they rush the website. They pick a template they like, fill in the gaps in the template, and then simply assume it’s good enough.
Often they aren’t sure what should be on their site or they’re simply copying what they’ve seen others do.
Let’s go through some principles and what works well.
What Would A Prospective Client Want To Know?
Put yourself in the shoes of a client.
Imagine you’re looking for an SEO or video consultant. When you visit the website of a few consultants, what would you hope to see? What would be important to you?
Hint: It’s not what the consultant looks like (i.e. a huge hero banner).
You probably want to know:
What services do they offer?
Do they have a unique approach? (do they have a unique approach or philosophy?)
Do they have a good track record of doing it?
Can you afford them?
Now we can spot the problem.
The websites of many independent consultants don’t do any of this!
Even the list of services can be very vague and generic.
When a video consultant says they do ‘video strategy’…that’s about as vague as it gets. What is the deliverable? What is the outcome? Are there different strategies at different levels etc? What will you actually get from that?
It’s almost ironic that consultants who promise to help clients stand out and uniquely position themselves struggle to perform the same task for themselves.
The worst part of creating a pamphlet instead of a resource is pamphlets don’t rank highly in search engines. Your odds of arriving via search to the website with no other content is about as thin as a pamphlet is close to zero.
What Should Your Website Do?
Your website should perform two roles.
Turn browsers into fans. It should turn people who land on your website via search into fans by encouraging people to consume more information from you. Ultimately, it should encourage people to subscribe or repeatedly visit your site.
Turn prospects into buyers. It should turn people who are looking for a consultant into people who contact you about your services. It should make you the preferred choice among the options.
Once you begin thinking about your site from this perspective, you can change what appears on it. Here’s what I’d suggest for a consultant’s website:
Turning Browsers Into Fans
The majority of visitors will be people seeking information (if you’ve worked on building your following).
Most of these people will arrive via a search result and your goal is to provide them with not only the information they’re looking for - but the information they didn’t even know they were looking for.
A key principle here is the more of YOUR content visitors consume, the more likely they are to contact you when they need help. We’ve often had people use our templates to structure their own projects and then bring us in to help. You want people to consume as much of your content as possible.
Your website should be an indispensable resource for your audience.
There are a couple of key things your website should include:
Frequently updated advice. You should have a place to share resources which will be valuable to the audience you want to read. Focus on content which solves big problems prospective clients face. A blog is a typical format for this - but it’s not the only format. Explore videos, audio, and other options if you like. You should have a growing collection of highly-targeted expertise which outlines your philosophy and solves challenges.
Related content. You don’t want your audience to read one article and leave. You want them to read several articles and become increasingly familiar with your philosophy. The more of your content someone consumes, the more likely their preference will shift towards you when they ever need help. Ensuring related content appears alongside and within articles or next to every video etc..is very useful. Your ideal situation is when people are reading one article, they open tabs to half a dozen more.
Comprehensive Resources. Your site should feature ‘banner content’. These are the detailed, comprehensive, guides to topics. They should be frequently updated and should provide the absolute best resource for a topic imaginable. Good evergreen content might include comprehensive resources on technology, examples, steps to getting started in the industry/topic etc…
Be clear about what you sell. The other key goal here is to make this audience aware of the services you offer. Don’t obfuscate this. You don’t need to ram the services you offer down the throats of the audience. But they should be aware by consuming your content who you are and what you do. It also helps to have a link to contact you in the same position on every page of the homepage.
‘Subscribe’ option. You should have a clear subscribe link on every page. The bigger your audience, the more leverage you will have later. Don’t overdo this. You don’t want to cover the screen with a pop-up message asking people to subscribe. That’s likely to drive people away.
This isn’t a comprehensive list by any means. But it is the critical list of things which helps turn a casual browser into a devout reader. The goal is to bring members increasingly deeper within your orbit.
Turning Prospects Into Buyers
If you’ve done your marketing efforts well, you should have a steady stream of people who are hearing about you and visiting your site when they need help. Prospective buyers know they need consultancy support.
However, they’re often not sure what kind of consultancy support they need or who to buy it from. This audience is time-starved. This audience has several very specific needs. They want to know:
What you help organisations do. You need a clear, simple, value proposition about what you help organisations achieve. It should highlight a broad purpose and/or the deliverables which go into it. You don’t need to be overly precise at this stage. They can click for more information. Just be clear about what you do.
Don’t try and be too clever about this. No one really sells ‘peace of mind’. Copywriters have trained the web to ‘sell outcomes’. I believe in the era of more informed audiences, that’s not as useful as it used to be. The language you use to describe your value proposition should match the kind of language your audience will easily understand.
Have you worked with organisations like theirs before? You need logos of brands you’ve worked with above the fold on your homepage. You should always have permission to use a brand’s logo (we once worked with Apple and added their logo to our website - big mistake!).
The quality of logos is more important than the quantity of logos. We could feature hundreds of logos on our website. But mixing famous brands with less famous brands reduces their impact. Having 5 to 10 amazing brands you’ve worked with is better than 5 great brands and 20 mid-tier brands. The goal of logos is simple. It establishes your credibility. Aside - don’t feature logos of brands who haven’t really hired you.
Can you be trusted? This is where you need video testimonials and case studies. Video testimonials are the gold standard. Detailed case studies sharing what you did for clients and the results are also incredibly powerful. Aside - if you can’t share the name of the client or the person providing the case study, its value plummets. After all, you could be making it up. Sharing detailed case studies is also a great idea.
Can you be contacted? Be mindful that most buyers won’t browse your website to learn everything about you and check you’re the right fit. They just want to see if you’re credible and then contact you. They want to explain their problem to you and then learn about how you can help. Don’t force people to use an email form if they don’t want to. Make an email address available too.
Get a gut feeling. This is a more difficult one to explain, but it essentially means do they get a good initial gut feeling from you or not? For example, if your website is poorly designed, uses a bad colour scheme, or just creates a ‘eugh!’ reaction - they’re probably not going to hire you. Amateur design makes you look amateur. Investing in a good design is worth the money.
As an aside, in certain fields, it’s often better to simply show what you’ve done. If you’re a public speaking coach or a video consultant, for example, you might want to replace your hero image with a video showing the actual work you’ve done. If you’re an SEO consultant, you might want to simply show graphics of your results.
Invest heavily in showing examples of your past work.
Your Website Shouldn’t Force People Down A Sales Funnel
You often see pamphlet websites with a large hero image and then big yellow/red call to action saying ‘contact me’ or ‘get a free consultation’.
This is a mistake. You’re forcing people down a sales funnel too soon.
Before people contact you, you want them to learn more about you and how amazing you are. Don’t force people down a sales funnel on their first visit. They know nothing about you at this stage.
Many consultants used a gated approach which includes:
Create a resource (‘five new trends your industry needs to know’).
Ask visitors to submit their email addresses to get the resource.
Once people submit their email, guide them through a sales journey.
The problem with this approach is it limits your reach. Visitors know they will get spammed if they submit their email address and you have fewer people who are familiar with you overall.
You only want people to submit their email address because they WANT to get more content from you.
Forcing them to do it is a bad idea.
A far better approach today is to simply create resources and publish them. Let search engines index it and let your visitors explore it without having to subscribe to a mailing list.
We’ve realised at FeverBee that we don’t want to optimise the visitor-to-subscribe or visitor-to-contact-us ratio. When people arrive at FeverBee, we want them to browse as many pages as possible. We want them to visit several times before contacting us. The more they educate themselves about us, the less time we need to spend doing it - and the more their brand preference shifts in our favour.
Our biggest clients never come through downloading a resource or any sort of automated sales funnel. They always come from multiple touchpoints over months - even years. We want people to visit our website several times, send links to our resources and posts to colleagues, and only contact us when they’re ready.
The more of our content they consume, the more they will contact us when they need help. Better yet, the more of our content they consume prior to contacting us, the better lead they will be for us. They will know more about us and trust us more. That’s the goal.
Don’t Settle For A Pamphlet Website
Creating a lightweight pamphlet website doesn’t help anybody.
At best, it simply serves as a business card. At worst, it makes you look lightweight. Your website should be an information-rich resource with constantly updated resources, information, and a plethora of case studies and testimonials.
Websites also benefit from a flywheel effect. The more resources and useful information you put there, the more people visit which makes it better to put more resources there. Invest heavily in having the best site in your industry - it will pay off later.
Put yourself in the shoes of a busy prospective client. What would they want to know? Does your website really set you apart the way you hope it goes? Open up the websites of a dozen competitors and ask a friend to compare them.
Aside - if you want me to review your site and give feedback, let me know. I’d love to help.
Good luck.
I actually really like this Sam.
Clearly articulates what you do, clean design, clear list of services, great set of testimonials and case studies. I might be tempted to ditch the chat bot, but that's probably more of a personal preference. Really nice work.
Great overview Richard. I know that when I'm buying a service, I definitely prefer those that provide tons of value through content that I can consume in my own time rather than all too predictable sales funnels with fake urgency and scarcity.
Here is our website that we built earlier in the year https://cloudjoy.com.au/
Appreciate your feedback.