So what makes an ideal Dog Walking Business website?
Well first of all I suggest that you keep it very simple to look at and navigate. Everyone hates a terrible looking website where you cannot find anything you are looking for.
Make it Google-friendly
You need to be sure that your potential clients can find your new website. You may have come across the term SEO. This stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and means ensuring that your website can be found by the likes of Google and Bing. SEO is ever-changing, and beyond the scope of this post, but some websites now come with some SEO built in, making the process a whole lot easier.
Your website needs to be kept up-to-date. While a good website shouts ‘professional’, one full of out of date info screams ‘amateur’.
Your website should also be a reflection of the image you are trying to present. Its layout, images and fonts should match as closely as possible any other offline marketing materials you produce, such as business cards and flyers.
So here are some of the key components that you will need to include on your website.
The first screen visitors to your website are like to land on will probably be your home screen, so it is pretty obvious that you need to make sure that your potential clients know they have landed in the right place. On the home screen the name of the business needs to be right at the top where they will see it first. You should also have your logo here if you have one.
Make it easy to find information
You also need to ensure your visitors can find their way around your website easily, and find the information they are looking for, so a prominent menu should direct them where to go. Also, it is often useful to put yourself in the shoes of your prospective clients and think about why they might need your services and phrase this in the way of questions to grab their attention when they reach your website.
Also on the home page you could have a noticeable special offer code to entice 1st time visitors to read on and encourage them to use your services. Include some highlighted text showing that you are fully insured and the services you offer as this promotes credibility and quickly lets the customer know what the website and the company is all about.
Finally, at the bottom of the home screen you need to include what is known as a ‘call to action’. An example would be a prompt for the customer to book a walk, such as ‘Call Us Now and book your first walk!’
The rest of your Dog Walking Business website…
Moving on to some of the other pages. Your website will need a page explaining in a little more detail the services you offer. Here you can explain what services you offer, and the duration of the services. For example, an hour’s walk and the benefits of the service.
Another page you might have separated or combined with your services page is a pricing page. You may feel you do not want to put prices on your website, but my opinion would be to do it for a couple of reasons. First of all, most of the people coming to your website will be looking for them, and secondly it will help filter out people who are not your target clients.
The other essential page for your website is a contact page. The more ways for your prospective clients to contact you the better. And having a contact page on your website makes it very easy for them to do this. Also, if you have a contact form on your contact page, then they will have the option of sending you a message regarding what they require, so that when you give them a call back you have a good idea what they want to discuss.
So how do you set-up a website? Well generally, you have a few options. If you have the budget you could have one made by a web designer or web design company. However, costs on this will vary greatly. Another option is to get one ‘off the shelf’ from an online company that specializes in providing websites for business and take care of all the technical stuff. Or if you are technically minded, you could do it yourself. You could use a website building platform such as WordPress. This would generally be the most economical option, but depending on your technical skills, may involve a steep learning curve.
The Dog Walker HQ are currently putting together an off-the-shelf Dog Walking Business Website Special Offer for our readers – so you don’t have to go through the hassle of building a website yourself! If this is is of interest to you Contact Us and let us know and we’ll send you all the info and prices.
Your website will be the hub for your business, so work out what pages you will need to include on your website, and also the information you need to include on the pages, such as the services you offer and your prices.