As an administrative service professional, your job is all about making a business run smoothly. You know the value you bring to the table when it comes to business support services, but how do you communicate it to potential clients?
A well-designed administrative services website can help promote your brand online and convince potential clients that you’ve got the solution to their business problems. But if you’re new to the world of web design, the idea of creating a website for your business might seem like a daunting task. In reality, it’s easier than you might think.
We’ve got the lowdown on why you should use a website to market your business and how to make one the simple way, as well as some useful tips and tricks for making your site the best it can be.
Find more clients for your bookkeeping, hiring, or virtual assistant services.
Why do you need a website?
Whether you’re providing back office support or front desk management, a good website advertises your specialties and serves as a record of your achievements.
Websites give your brand credibility and can serve as the central hub for your offerings. Existing and potential clients should be able to find all the vital information about your services here, including how to contact you and why they should work with you.
Ideally, a brand’s website is the central component of a multichannel approach. Depending on the nature of your administrative services, you’ll want to link your website to an interconnected web of communication channels, including social media, email, phone, and text. The more opportunities you offer for clients to connect with you, the more likely you are to get hired.
That said, these alternate communication channels should be thought of as just that: alternates.
Some businesses set up a Facebook page, add their phone number, and call it a day. However, if you limit yourself to just one communication channel, your message will never be seen by people who don’t use that channel. Your website keeps all your channels of communication connected, and provides in-depth information about your services for those who want to learn more.
What to include on your website
People who visit your site are seeking answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. Put yourself in the shoes of these potential clients. What would convince you to hire someone? How would you identify someone you can trust to give your business the support it needs? Stay focused on this central goal as you make decisions about your website design.
If you don’t have a website yet, it’s easy to make one with Constant Contact. You can choose from existing templates and customize them to match your brand and unique offerings, adding any pages you need to get your message across.
Your administrative or business services website should include at least three main pages to effectively draw in clients: Home, About, and Contact. From there, you can branch out to include more, like landing pages for each of your primary services, as well as ones for client testimonials and professional distinctions you may have earned.
Homepage
The homepage is the most important one on your whole site. It’s the first thing most potential clients will land on, so it’s important to make a good first impression.
Your homepage should clearly establish what you have to offer clients, including your specific services and your dedication to customer service. Give your website visitors quick answers to the “four Ws and one H” of your business:
- Who would benefit from your services? Let visitors know if what you do is a good fit for what they do (or want to do).
- What services do you offer? Be specific and concise.
- Why should the visitor choose you? Tell visitors what makes your offering unique.
- Where can clients find you? Direct visitors to your Contact page from the homepage.
- How can clients get started? Make it simple for new clients to figure out how to get the ball rolling.
About page
Visitors who open your About page have taken an extra step to learn more about who you are, which will help them decide if they want to work with you. Make your case for why they should. What problems can you solve? What makes you the best choice for solving these problems? What do other people think of your work?
Include information about your education or professional training, as well as a list of notable skills and past employers. Don’t be afraid to make this page a bit more personable than the others too — people are more likely to invest in your services if they know a bit about who you are.
Contact page
You want to make it as easy as possible for potential clients to get in touch, so your Contact page should be clean and simple to navigate. That means including information like:
- Your city or physical address
- Your business hours
- Links to your social media pages
- Your email address
- Your phone number
Consider embedding a contact form connected to your email address. This will allow visitors to make contact directly from the page.
Website design best practices
As you build the basic pages of your new website, you’ll want to keep a few key design tips in mind. Not only will these make your website look better, they’ll help you turn interested leads into satisfied customers.
Optimize for search engines
As you’ve looked into how to market yourself as an administrative services professional, you might have heard the term SEO, or search engine optimization. It sounds like marketing jargon, but it’s important for anyone to keep in mind when creating a website, and it’s easier to manage than you might think.
Put simply, search engine optimization is about getting your website in front of potential customers. By including keywords related to your business in the text of your website, search engines like Google are more likely to put your site at the top of search results pages. Clearly labeling your contact information, posting blogs on topics related to your industry, and including fast-loading images and graphics can improve your SEO as well.
Make it mobile-responsive
More people than ever before are using their phones to search for products and services, and it’s important to meet them where they’re at. That means creating a mobile-responsive website that adjusts itself automatically based on the user’s device.
The easiest way to ensure mobile visitors will have a good experience using your website is to use a service like Constant Contact, which offers a variety of mobile-responsive website templates.
Constant Contact also allows you to preview your site’s mobile version. Test it out before going live. Can you quickly find what you need? Is it easy to make contact from the page on your phone?
Keep designs simple
Whether people are viewing your site on mobile or desktop, you want to keep your page design clean, clear, and cohesive. Focus on straightforward navigation, uncluttered pages, and graphics that display clearly on any screen size.
Website elements that rely on Flash or that take a few seconds to load can prevent visitors from going any further on your website, so keep it simple. Use standard fonts and avoid too many images and graphics that clutter up the page and increase loading times.
Start creating your administrative services website
There are plenty of tools that can help you create a great administrative services website, and you don’t need any web design experience to use them. Constant Contact can help you build your website, share it online, and even grow your brand through ads and email marketing.
When creating your site, be sure to create pages that include all the essential information about who you are and what you offer. Make it easy for clients to find you on search engines, and to get in touch with you once they do.
Check out our comprehensive guide to marketing for professional services, The Download, and you’ll have all the information you need to take your administrative services business to the next level.
