The 7 features that every IT website must have

Having a website is simple enough. You can pay a service like Squarespace 10 bucks a month a get an OK looking site in only a few hours. But is the site going to be effective for your IT service business? Not really.

This post will look into the key features that you must have on your website to properly educate and inform your visitors, and turn them into paying customers.

1. Case Studies

When looking to spend a few thousand dollars and up, your potential customer will always, and I mean, always look for evidence that you have done a similar task before. Just like you wouldn’t hire a heart surgeon if they’ve never held a scalpel before, your customers wont want to hire you if you haven’t migrated a data centre before. Oh, but you have? It doesn’t matter if your customer cant see it. So put together a few case studies in the below format:

1. The Company – A brief description on the company or person you worked with.
2. The Problem – Why were you brought in to implement a solution? Surely the customer didnt add a new rack just for fun. Tell us why, it’ll help your customers relate.
3. The Solution – Get a bit nerdy, but try to hold back on the jargon as much as possible. “We implemented an enterprise grade Fortinet firewall to block unauthorised access to local CCTV cameras” is a lot more relatable than “The FG100D’s 10,000,000 packets per second processing power with additional AV and IPS was selected and installed in a 20RU climate controlled rack to intercept unauthorised brute force attacks via their IP cameras unsecure web server”. I yawned just writing that.
4. The Benefits – Show where your past customers have made money, or saved time – and your service will no longer be an expense, but an investment into their own businesses success.

2. Testimonials

Similar to, and often, hand-in-hand with case studies are testimonials. They provide the social proof that you are human beings that aren’t horrible to work with.

The great thing about testimonials is they can be used to reinforce any, and all, points that you make anywhere on your website. They can be used:

• On you homepage, to quickly build trust
• In your case studies to add credibility.
• On your contact us page to encourage users to hit that submit button
• On your services page to prove that you can do what you are suggesting
• And on and on…

Its hard to include too many testimonials, so get them out there, everywhere on your site, your customers will trust you more, and find it mentally easier to get in touch.

3. Email Capture

Chances are, your customers will not get in touch with you after their first visit to your page. Either they aren’t yet ready to buy, have stumbled on your site with no real need, or they dont know you well enough to commit to a call.

Thats where capturing an email comes in handy. With this email, you’ll be able to drip your customers information every now and then to:

• Build trust
• Explain your solutions
• Keep you on top of mind

Email drip marketing is a whole world in itself so i’ll leave it at that for now. But as a bare minimum – try to get your visitors email address, then introduce yourself so that they can find you in their emails when they are ready to buy your service.

4. Clear calls-to-action

Just listing your products and services is great, but when a person is browsing your website, chances are, their brain has gone on autopilot, and isn’t giving 100% of their attention to you.

Thats why you need to lead them through all the necessary information that they need until they are ready to get in touch with you. How? using a big, clear call-to-action on every page.

You’ll see at the bottom of this page there is a big blue button asking you to contact us. Because we find that visitors that get in touch with us, end up being customers! If the customer reads about your service then hits the end of your page, with no clear idea what to do, chances are they are going to go back to their emails, Facebook, the news, whatever…. but they are leaving your site.

Give everyone a clear next step so that they don’t have to think about what to do next and you’ll find you get a lot more contact from your customers.

5. An ‘about us’ page

The old saying of people do business with people they like has never been truer. Nowadays with social media we can find a person and decide if we like them without ever talking to them. If you have a pleasant About us page that shows who you and your team are, your values, and a little personal info, your visitors might like you straight away, and not need to find that photo of you passed out under a table at the local footy game.

6. Integrations

I’ve found that IT service providers typically have anywhere between 5 and 10 disjointed systems that are completely separated from each other. Your ticketing system is not connected to your CRM, your CRM isn’t connected to your accounting package, your chat isn’t connected to your staff, your SNMP monitoring isn’t connected to anything. I’m sure there are 5 more you can think of that suck up your time.

Think about how many places you have to search for information before you find it, think of all the data duplication (copy and pasting) you do, think of how much you miss.

Your website can now be the backbone of your business, connecting all the various apps in your company together into a seamless experience will save you countless hours every week.

7. Responsive (Mobile Friendly)

This one goes without saying these days, but pretty much all websites need to be mobile friendly. People will hate you, Google will punish your search rankings, the world will end. A slight exaggeration, sure, but you get the point.

There you have it, a few key ideas that will help grow your business and save you time.

If your website does not do all of the above, you are leaving money on the table. Please contact us for an obligation free consultation on how to improve your sites performance.