Most of us probably started out our blog when we didn’t really know what we were doing.
If you’re here, reading this, chances are that you’re a creative… which means that you also find it really hard to leave your site alone – you’re always tweaking it, changing things up, playing around to make it better and prettier.
That is all well and good (and fun!) but if you don’t have the fundamentals sorted from the get-go, you’re at risk of looking unprofessional, and annoying people, to boot.
Below I’ve laid out the 6 things that you must have on your blog and/or website in order for it to be doing its job properly.
1. Social Media Buttons
Make it super-easy for people to follow you on social media. Chances are, if they stumble upon your blog and they like what they read, they’ll want to follow you somehow in order to see more of what you have to say.
Different people prefer different social media – so don’t hide your social media links all over your website, turning the hunt for your twitter handle into an epic adventure.
Preferably, add buttons linking to all the social media you are active on – and put all of these buttons together in an obvious place. Here on C&T they’re up the top of the sidebar – super-easy to find.
If you’ve got a WordPress site, there are endless plugins/widgets that help you to do this. Or, you can find pretty button graphics that suit your site and add them manually.
2. Mailing List Signup
There’s a reason that some sites basically hit you over the head with mailing list sign-up forms/pop-ups. It’s because email is the most effective way to keep in contact with customers and potential customers – and to bring in sales over time, especially from past customers.
The point of a great blog is to convert readers into fans that WANT to hear from you via email. {click to tweet}
Once you have that privileged access to your fans via email, it makes it a heck of a lot easier to let them know about new products, special sales, discounts, and other goodies.
Make it both easy and appealing to sign up to your email list.
On C&T you can see we have a mailing list signup form on the sidebar right under the social media buttons. There’s also a banner linking to the sign-up page at the end of every blog post. But we don’t just say ‘hey, sign up!!’ – we give our subscribers something to entice them to take that step. In our case, it’s a free ebook. For my Epheriell mailing list, I give a 10% discount on their first purchase after sign-up, as well as monthly entry to win a piece of jewellery and access to subscriber-only specials.
And don’t make them write an essay to subscribe – the only thing you REALLY need is their email, though you might like to get their first name, too. I don’t personally worry about that, because when I get an email from someone via their mailing list, I actually dislike it when my name is used – it just makes me think “C’mon, I KNOW you didn’t write this specifically to me, why are we pretending?” {I’m not the only person who thinks this, right?}. But that’s a personal preference.
3. About Page
Let your readers & customers into your world – tell them WHY you do what you do.
People like to know about people. The like to find out who you are, why you write what you write or make what you make.
Tell them your name (first name at least!). Show them a photo of you (we all love faces). Tell them your story.
Make yourself a real person that they can feel connected to. Especially in the handmade industry, chances are that your customers are choosing your work over something factory-made because they care about buying from a real person. Open up and let them into your world, just a little bit – it’s worth it.
4. Contact Information
Make it easy to get in touch by putting the some or all of the following info on a separate ‘Contact’ page on your site:
- Contact form
- Social media links
- Phone number
- Postal address
Everyone has different ways that they prefer to communicate. Make it clear which communication method you prefer.
On the C&T Contact page I have my email, twitter, and postal address (which is a PO Box – I don’t give out my residential address or my phone number online).
5. Search Bar
Please, for the love of unicorns, make your site searchable!!
I cannot remember how many times I’ve come across a great blog, and wanted to search to find more of what that person has written on a particular topic… only to discover they have no search bar on their site. Frustration! What do you think I did? Yep – clicked away.
It’s super-easy to add a search bar – in fact, many WordPress themes have one built in. If your website theme doesn’t have one built-in, you can, again, easily install a plugin that will give you a search bar widget. Or get your designer to add one. However you do it, make sure you do it!
6. Shop Link
I know this sounds like a ridiculous no-brainer… but yeah. Have one shop link that is prominent.
This is especially important if you sell on multiple online venues. I’m sure you have a preferred one – make the link to that venue VERY obvious. Don’t make all venues equally prominent – you’ll just give people choice paralysis.
If your shop and blog are on the same website, this is pretty easy, as the whole thing is integrated. If your blog/website is separate from your shop, make a separate ‘shop’ page that links to your shop, or make the link obvious in your sidebar.
Here on C&T I have pages for the Set Up Shop E-course and our Guides (of which there is only one right now). I can do that because we have so few products. But when you have stacks, just have them all in one place and link to that.
Are any of these 6 things missing from your website?
Image source: Lime Lane Photography
