Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Creating a website can always be a tricky thing, especially if you’re an ISV. You want to be sure you have all of the best information on your page, while not overwhelming viewers with excessive text. In order to target our prospective buyer to generate inbound traffic and leads, these 7 tips are key performers for an effective website. Calling all ISVs, this one is for you!
1. Know Whose Buying
You’ve probably heard of “One-Size-Fits-All” messages. Heed this warning: That content will fall flat in its pursuit. You’re likely going to be promoting your software services to those in many different industries. It’s smart to switch up your phrasing a bit. You wouldn’t market the same content to your Food & Beverage customer that you would project to your Healthcare client would you? All the while, it’s important to make sure that you’re “News” or “Blog” page is always being updated with new content. You’ve got to keep this interesting and don’t want to bore your followers with old news. An ISVs value proposition should be communicated clearly enough so that you can prove your legitimacy and credibility. A trusting customer is a loyal customer, for years to come. 
2. Emphasize your Team’s Ability
Many ISVs are startups and be small in size. It may come in handy to create an “About Us” or a “Meet the Team” tab on your main page to help your customers place a face to a name. People buy from people. Reiterating the above statement, it’s SO important to build a trusting relationship with your customer base, so they will remain loyal throughout the progression of your company’s duration.
3. Sales, Sales, Sales
Again, people buy from those who they trust. How can you go about perfecting this? Collecting data from previous clients to formulate case studies, success stories and perhaps even a FAQ section will benefit you greatly. These features will validate your software’s legitimacy and credibility as a brand. Note: Achieving your early adopter customer is vital for recurring success in any realm.
4. Be a Social Butterfly
Take advantage of the digital assets you have in your database. Videos and photos can reach their maximum potential as promotional items on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can “tease” photos or videos of new product releases or company updates in short excerpts to keep your customers interested and in the know. Instagram and Facebook both offer features for live video streams which can showcase longer events or possibly even shorter clips for “teaser” material.
Twitter only harbors video content up to 140 seconds long, or perhaps 2 minutes and 20 seconds. There is no such thing as too many hashtags. Hashtag away with your creative team helping you come up with clever hashtags to accommodate your social media post. Don’t be shy. Be friendly when it comes to following other accounts, especially those who identify as partners or customers. Lastly be sure to list your website’s URL on your social pages, so it comes full circle and your customers won’t struggle with navigating their way to your website.
Great Website Design + Engaging Content = Increased Followers
5. Define your Call-to-Action
The goal of your website shouldn’t be to sell your products, but to promote a compelling call-to-action. Once your CTA is determined and communicated, you’ll experience an influx of visitors to your website. Perhaps you could include some incentivized surveys or newsletter sign-up forms to your main page. This will help gather the masses and even help inform customers with their potential purchases.
6. Search. Engine. Optimization
Take advantage of SEO. It’s your one-stop solution for getting noticed. Most content management systems possess their own SEO plug-in. WordPress for example uses Yoast SEO, which will walk you through recommended keywords and phrases to build into your website. Optimizing your landing pages should include content that is good enough to convince consumers that your products are better than others and worth their time.
Effectively Optimized Landing Pages Include:
- Product Features & Benefits
- Relevant Keywords
- Brief Video Clips
- Customer Testimonials
- Strong CTAs
7. Chat with Us!
The importance of live chat plug-ins is huge from a customer service standard. Being able to walk your customers through their software issue or concern is a huge leap towards increased customer loyalty. Many brands use social media to answer questions and collect customer feedback, but it’s proven to be ineffective in comparison to pop-up chat feature that lives on your home page. By crafting a live chat feature with an employee on the other end of the chain, customers will ultimately feel respected and their opinion matter and deserve to be heard. 
As an ISV, your website is your foundation. Once it’s all established and flowing well, you will be able to formulate marketing messages in coordination with your key audience at stake. Continuing to update both the overall marketing message and content will allow you to optimize your outreach and engagement, and eventually sales will soar.
