ADS WON'T HELP YOU ONE BIT IF YOUR WEBSITE IS SCARING PEOPLE AWAY! BOO!
It's something EVERY wedding blog editor or online advertising sales person hears at one point or another:
YOUR WEBSITE SENDS ME TRAFFIC BUT ZERO LEADS
Typically the advertiser is blaming their advertising outlet for not getting 'hires' from their ad and to that I say: TSK TSK!!! Let's go through this and try and understand ... a bride or groom is trolling Grey Likes Weddings and sees your beautiful profile page ... LOVES it ... CLICKS on the link to view your website ... sees YOUR website ... trembles in fear thinking "this doesn't match the message I just got" ... clicks OUT ... moves on. You see, the ad WORKED ... it brought a potential client to YOUR website ... it was your website that made them leave.
YOUR WEBSITE IS ONE OF THE FIRST IMPRESSIONS YOUR COMPANY WILL MAKE
In most cases your website will be the first impression your company makes to a potential paying client. You can NOT let your website just sit there and get stale ... you can't let it get dated ... you can't let the font look like something scary from the early 90's ... it needs to be updated. Otherwise: your ads will mostly likely NEVER work for you. You will constantly feel let down by the investments you make for online advertising. And: you will be that person I talked about in my opening where you feel that you need to blame your advertising platforms and not renew your ads ... how will that help you?
I SAY 'F*CK THAT' AND JUST INVEST IN YOUR WEBSITE!
Don't give up on your advertising ... instead, take a short break from it and invest that money into a website you are PROUD of!! Put the ads on hiatus and get someone to drill into you what your website SHOULD be saying about you .... update your homepage image or get a killer designer to make something custom for you, invest in a better website host (like Squarespace!) ... get a new logo designed that will appeal to today's bride or your TARGET MARKET client ... it's worth the money!! Because if you don't update your website, all that money you spend to promote your company will mostly likely be a waste.
Yesterday I had an amazing coaching session with a client of mine where we went through their images and website and narrowed down what works and what doesn't - we also took a look at their analytics and realized that their ads WERE sending them great traffic - but that their bounce rate was VERY HIGH. What your bounce rate tells you is key. Are people staying who come in? Are they looking at more than 1 page on your website?
OR DID YOUR WEBSITE SCARE THE BEJEEBERS OUT OF THEM AND THEY RAN THE OTHER WAY!?
Here are a few of my suggestions that you could try if you are a company or wedding pro who gets a decent amount of great clicks from your online ads, but rarely any ACTION from them:
call on some friends you trust! tell them that you will NOT be offended and that you'd like their honest opinion of your website ... take their feedback srsly and consider what they're saying
hire someone with a trusted eye to go through your website page by page and bring you a report of the changes they suggest you make ... and then hire someone to make those changes for you
hire someone to design a logo for your company and then create a landing page (so just 1 page online) that has the new logo, your social media links (make sure to update them with the new logo!!!), and a clear way to contact you ... then add a short message that says: our website is getting a facelift and we'll be unveiling it soon! ... map/route your url to this page and then you've just bought yourself some time to get the funds in place for a redesign and this hides the website that is turning people off
teach yourself the basics and create your own website! this can be done ... I self taught myself in 2008 when I launched Style Unveiled and it's been a fantastic learning process ever since! and I'm still learning tricks today :) building your own website can be exciting and gives you control over the amount of money you choose to spend on it.
HEATHER, THERE ARE MORE WAYS TO GET HIRED THAN JUST THROUGH YOUR WEBSITE
YES!! Of course there are :) I am only speaking to those wedding pros who get frustrated when they see a ton of clicks from their ads and those clicks never or rarely turn into a paying client. If you get a ton of referrals by word of mouth then in most cases those people have heard such awesome stuff about you they could care less about your sh*tty website ;) lol ... but if you are just starting out or are finding yourself hurting for clients ... it could very well be that your online face needs a little work :)
XO~ Heather
