Travis Pflanz, co-organizer of WordPress KC meetup group and part of the WordCamp Kansas City organizing team, presented at WordCamp 2018 in a session titled, “Before You Blog: Everything Your WordPress Business Website is Missing”.
Because the target audience for WordCamp is users of WordPress, a common platform for blogging, Travis uses the term, “blog”, but these tips apply to any website.
It is important to keep the content on a website fresh and up to date. This will keep people coming back to visit your site. Update often, write new text, post new articles.
Use calls to action. I thought about what calls of action we could use on grocery store websites. How about a link to listen to a related podcast or video? If appropriate, provide a link to “get more information” or “buy now”.
Put the store’s location and phone number in the footer in addition to the Contact page. This way it is visible on every page of the website.
State the purpose of your business. As much as people don’t like to read, an in-depth “About” page is important for those who are seeking more information about your business and the story on how you got started. If you are a small business, local, family-owned, tell people that.
Use Facebook pixel even if you’re not using Facebook ads yet. You can at least begin collecting data for use later.
Have an in-depth product and service details page. For grocery stores, the services are especially important. Does your store offer carpet cleaner rentals? Does it have Red Box movies, an ATM or a gift card mall? Let customers know it is convenient for them to take advantage of these services and pick up their groceries all in one trip.
What questions are your customers asking you over and over again? Put the answers on your website. Many people will go to a website looking for the answer before they contact the store. Do you have enough questions to constitute an FAQ page? Have some fun with answerthepublic.com to come up with ideas for your FAQ page.
View Travis’ full presentation on YouTube.
