By Audrey Isaac, 100Candles.com
We live in a world dominated by Generation Y, so it makes sense that our marketing and sales approaches should be tailored towards the increasing population of millennials. The stronger their buying power grows, the bigger impact they can have on our businesses – with that in mind, let’s talk about some of the best ways to appeal to millennials through your number one sales tool: your website.
From speedy loading times to intuitive menu bars, today’s professionals have high expectations for websites and won’t hesitate to go elsewhere if your website can’t meet their needs in a reasonable amount of time and effort. Here are some of our top tips for creating a website that draws in new business from millennials:
Keep it simple and sweet
Think of the lobby to your company’s office – do you think it would attract more people if it was clean and streamlined or cluttered and disorganized? The same goes for your website – a visitor’s first impression should be one of simplicity and ease. Everything from the menu bar to the contact page should be self-explanatory. If there’s one thing we can say about millennials, it’s that they want things to be convenient and easy – keep this in mind as you create your site. Take out unnecessary pages, buttons, widgets, popups or features and only keep the essentials.
Customer service is key
Nothing is quite as frustrating as needing help and not being able to reach someone or get the answer you’re after. With that in mind, make sure that customer service is a priority. Avoid unsatisfied customers and negative reviews by treating every customer with the respect and professionalism that they deserve. While a simple contact form and quick responses are certainly must-haves, consider having a comprehensive FAQ page where people can consult before reaching out. It’ll save time for both of you!
Test out your speed
Nobody wants to be the victim of a constant loading page. With accessibility on the mind, millennials aren’t afraid to jump ship if a website takes forever to load and they may just go after the next Google entry – which could be your competitor. Test out your website speed with Google’s Speed Test and make sure that it’s up to standards. It’s also worth giving your website a test drive, visiting every corner of every page to ensure the loading time is acceptable.
Say yes to mobile
Is your website mobile-friendly? If your answer was ‘huh?’ or ‘no,’ it’s time to reevaluate. If you haven’t noticed, most millennials (and other generations as well!) are connected to their smartphones a majority of the time. Phones and tablets are quickly becoming the primary way to access the Internet and do research, so your website needs to be mobile-friendly if you want to reach the masses. On most platforms, this is a simple switch in the backend so keep an eye out for that.
After you’ve tweaked your website and are happy with the result, have somebody else give fresh eyes to it. Have them try all of the links and features to ensure that everything runs smoothly, as well as run through all of the copy to ensure that everything is as intuitive as possible. From there, keep an eye on your website analytics to see if your rate of retention has improved – you’ll be surprised by the results!
Audrey Isaac is the spokesperson of 100 Candles, a wholesale market for candles and lights. Since 2002, thousands of wedding and event professionals have entrusted 100 Candles with their wholesale candle accounts. For more information, please visit http://www.100candles.com/.
