Sometimes as a business owner you approach your website with a frugal mindset, trying to keep things as “simple” as possible. This can cause you to forget how expansive and useful your website can be for your business. And how it can really enhance (or diminish!) your clients experience of working with you.
When you are ready to easily connect with your ideal clients and make the most out of your website (the digital hub of your business), your website needs to be thorough and detailed.
The one page website
A one page website can be a great place to start at the very beginning of your business journey. I even offer them as part of my services! But (of course there’s a but) even the one page websites I create are designed to be a placeholder for a full website that will be created once the client has the time and resources to expand the project.
I understand that not every business-owner is ready to invest in a fully-fledged brand and website all at once, so this is why I offer it. But the truth is, a one page website is never going to be as impactful or as a detailed and thorough as a full website. Even if you run a service based business, and you think you only need a one page brochure website to explain what you do and sell to your clients, by the end of this post I hope you will learn that sticking to the one page website for the long-term, isn’t doing your business any favours.
Individual services pages
Something that I hear a lot is that surely you can just put all the information for your individual services on one page. This is a common misconception and I advise against this for many reasons:
1. All the details
Individual service pages give you an opportunity to explain in detail all the information associated with a specific service. The warmer the leads who are visiting your website, the more they will want to know things in detail. They won’t just be skimming through a site they randomly found. They will actually be interested in the work you do and potentially interested in hiring you. You always want to cater to these type of warm leads and make sure they can find all the information they are looking for in a quick and easy way. And having individual service pages is a great way to do this.
2. All important SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Having separate pages for your services gives you a chance to optimise each of those pages for specific SEO Keywords. People often forget this when they want to just have one general services page. Every business owner with a website wants to rank well for its chosen keywords on Google. Of course this is what you want.
Do you want people who are interested in your service to easily find you, be impressed by what you do and hire you? Or course!
But there is work that goes into ranking well on Google and it doesn’t just happen because you want it to. Part of the work of ranking well is having individual service pages because each of these pages can be optimised for its own specific keyword.
Let’s use a Designer as an example. These are the services they provide and they want to rank well for the associated keywords:
- Service 1: Branding Design
- Service 2: Web Design
- Service 3: Web Development
You want to create an individual page for each of these services so Google can first of all understand what it is you do. Google reads your website, but to stand out in your industry you have to make things super clear so Google will acknowledge you and hopefully start to improve your ranking for relevant keywords.
With the Designer as an example, here is what their services pages URLs will look like when they have individual pages:
- Service 1: example.ie/branding-design/
- Service 2: example.ie/web-design/
- Service 3: example.ie/web-development/
The URLs of your web pages are something that Google reads to figure out where to show you in it’s search results. So you can see that having individual services pages with keywords in the URLs is way more clear for Google than a URL like this:
- All services on one page: example.ie/services/
This page could be about anything!
- Are you in the finance industry?
- Do you run an events agency?
- Do you give legal advice?
- Do you run a medical clinic?
The word “services” in your page URL could mean anything and that means Google will have to work harder to figure out what you do. If you make it in any way difficult for Google to figure your website out, the will push you further and further down their priority list. We want Google to like us and to rank us, so we won’t be doing that!
What brand style will attract better clients?
Take the quiz to discover the visual direction that will build trust with the type of organisations you actually want to work with.
3. Specificity of Testimonials
If you seperate out your services onto individual webpages you get to be specific with the details. Instead of having general information about your business like you would have on your homepage, you get to really hone in on the details of a particular service.
One thing that I find really useful, is having the specific testimonials relating to each service highlighted on each service page. Since you will probably have less testimonials for each service that when they are all together, like in a slider on the homepage for example, you get a chance to really highlight your previous clients experience of a particular service. And that’s really valuable.
We’ve talked already about how although people might initially skim the content on your website, if they find something they relate to there’s a much higher chance that they’ll read your site in a more detailed way. It’s more likely that something that’s written on the site will stick in their head and they’ll want to come back to it and read more.
We want to present information like testimonials in a clear and logical way and the more your potential clients relate to this information the better.
Including a Portfolio or Case Studies on your website
When you only have a one page website or site that isn’t thorough, you don’t leave room for showcasing the projects that you’ve worked on. Mentioning them quickly on your homepage isn’t the same as dedicating a full project page to each one. You want to draw potential clients into reading all about the great work you’ve done for other people. And of course you can’t do that if those project pages don’t exist in the first place.
On individual project pages you get to go into more detail. You get to talk about the problem the client came to you with initially and how are you solved it.
- You want to showcase the fact that you are here to solve your clients problems.
- You want a potential client who is reading the project page to relate to the problem being talked about and the fact that your business solved it.
Or at least you want the potential client to see that you have a range of expertise that can relate to what they are looking for in some way.
Project pages are another opportunity to use the specific client testimonial related to the project on that actual page. Potential clients who are reading the page will associate the exact review with the work you are showcasing. Getting that specific is always a good thing. You’re showing your potential clients that you care about the details and you know the details are important to them.
