Are you booking appointments from your website? Are your potential clients able to find your website online? If not, there could be several things to blame. In this post I’m going to take you through a DIY checklist to help you audit your own website. This checklist is the exact list that we use when we audit websites for our clients or PMU artists that want know how we can increase their website performance.
Keep in mind as you read through this, the internet is always changing, you’re website should change along with it. Most of the websites that we audit are outdated and haven’t been updated in years. We also run into a lot of artists who build their own website on platforms such as Wix, Weebly or Squarespace (which are all easy to use platforms) but take a higher level of knowledge and skill to optimize in order to book more appointments.
Here are the EXACT guidelines that we use to build EFFECTIVE websites that are designed to help Permanent Cosmetics artists get found online and most importantly, book more appointments.
BRANDING
- Color Scheme – It’s important that your websites color scheme matches your businesses logo and branding across all forms of marketing. Including: Facebook, Instagram, Signage in and around your business, business cards, flyers, ect.
- Images – Your clients LOVE to see images of YOUR work and permanent makeup studio. Try to stay away from stock images as they tend to be overused and give a “corporate” feel which can be off putting for some clients.
- About Us page – Your about page should tell people about you as the artist but also talk about your businesses overall style and image. Does your business have a tattoo shop kind of feel or do people walk into more of a spa like environment? This is also a great place to list your certifications and experience in the industry. Don’t be afraid to let your personality come through in your “About me” description.
- Typography – The font and font size on your website is important. Get too crazy with your fonts and colors and it can be hard to read. The wrong font style could also make your website and business look unprofessional. Stick with 2-3 fonts max and try to stick with a congruent color scheme as your businesses branding.
Design
- Formatting – Always use a consistent style throughout your menus, headers, images, and typography.
- Organization – The easier it is for your potential clients to find the info they are looking for, the easier it is to get more clients for your permanent makeup business. If someone has to search through your website, chances are that they will move on to the next website on Google. This also includes keeping your written text short and to the point. No one wanted to scroll for ages reading information.
- Negative (white) space – Don’t be afraid of blank space on your website. This makes your content easier to read and also helps to break up different sections on your website so that readers flow from one text area to another.
- High Quality Images – You’ve probably seen a website with blury or pixalated photos. Because your website will be loaded on many different screen sizes, it’s important to make sure that your images look clean and crisp on all screens. If you are using large images, make sure that they are optimized or (compressed) so that they load quicker.
- Call to Action – Your website should include sections that “guide them” to do something. Do you want people to “Read More” about Microblading or Permanent Eyeliner or “Book an Appointment”? Tell them to do so with a Call to Action.
- Mobile Friendly/Responsive – On average, 80% of your website visitors are going to be on their phone, so it’s extremely important that your website is mobile friendly. Most importantly, Google wil actually BLOCK your website entirely from being found on mobile search results if your website isn’t mobile friendly.
Content
- Helpful and Engaging – Your websites main objective is to educate potential clients on why they should come to your for permanent cosmetics services. Your content should include educational information on each of your services so that your clients can make a more informed decision about what they want. Quality content also establishes trust in you as a professional, setting you apart from your competition.
- Grammar – Nothing ruins credibility more than grammatical errors and misspelling on your website. If its hard to read, more people will move on.
- Duplicate content – Using original content is BIG gold star when it comes to Google. Plagiarized content or duplicate content across multiple pages on your website is not only bad for Google rankings, but it can also be confusing or frustrating for your website viewers.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
- Keywords – Using words and phrases that your clients would typically search for on Google is the best way to increase your Google ranking. For instance, if you are located in Miami Florida and offer microblading, it would be wise to include the key-phrase “Microblading in Miami Florida” on your website along with any other services you offer. Be sure not to OVERUSE keywords, such as mentioning “Permanent Makeup” 20 times on a single page. Google refers to that as “keyword stuffing” and can get your website demoted in the search ranks.
- Website URLs – Your website pages should include the keywords that you’d like to rank for on Google. For instance, if you have a page on your dedicated to “Permanent Lip Blushing” it may be a good idea to too that page www. yourwebsite. com /LIPCOLOR or /LIPBLUSHING. This will help Google and potential clients find what they are looking for.
- Image ALT tags and File Names – Image tags are image descriptions that tell Google what your image is and what’s in it. Be sure to use the keywords and phrases that you want to rank for in Google when optimizing your ALT tags and files names as Google Image will show your images and website in search results based on what you call your images and how you describe them.
- Image size – The file size of your images can cause your website to low extremely slowly. You want your images to be VISUALLY large while keeping the FILE SIZE as small as possible. When uploading large images, be sure to compress them, or save them with the smallest file size possible. You can also use a tool like www.tinypng.com to compress your images before uploading them to your site.
- Meta Titles and Descriptions – Meta data appears in search results on Google as well as many other platforms that show a preview of your websites content such as a Facebook share or on Instagram. Each of your websites pages should have an accurate title and description that using the keywords you’d like to rank for on Google. This description should also serve to entice people to click on your page.
- Sitemap – A website sitemap is used specifically for search engines. It tells Google and other search engines what pages are on your website and how to navigate from page to page. Not having a sitemap can hurt your Google ranking.
- Load Speed – Your pages load speed is important for 2 reason. 1) No one likes waiting forever for a website to load. 2) Google give priority to fast loading pages. The average page speed should be less than 3 seconds. Large images, old web code and several other factors can impact your load speed. To check your page load speed, you can use tools such as https://gtmetrix.com/.
Bonus
- Tracking – Knowing WHERE your website visitors are coming from and HOW MANY your have tells you a lot about the success of your website. Think of your website like a coffee shop. If 100 people walk into your shop every day but you only sell 1 cup of coffee, there might be something wrong with your store. The same is true about your website. Using tools such as Google Analytics can help give you a lot of important data about your website suck as number of visitors, where they came from, how long they stay on your site, what pages they visited, how many pages they visited and much more.
- Website Backups + Security – Just like everything else, websites crash. It’s important to backup your website in case you ever lose it or it gets hacked. Unfortunately, even though you are a small business and are probably thinking “why would anyone want to hack my website, I’m not that important!”, small business websites are at the top of the list for criminals to try to take control of. The reason being, if you have a contact form on your website, there is a lot of damage that intruders can do by getting the names, emails, and phone numbers that you potential clients send you when using your websites contact form.
- Social Media – Your website should be the center of your online presence. Typically this is where you are going to send people to education them on your services and eventually to Book and Appointment. With that said, you should always include links to your social media accounts somewhere on your website. Most effectively, on your contact page or in the footer at the bottom of your site. This way, people have a chance to look through your website and services before leaving your site to look at your social media.
How does your website do?
Would you give your website an A+ or F-? Your potential clients are giving it a similar score as well as your business based on what they see. Hopefully you scored yourself high and if not, now you know what needs fixed in order to get more clients.
If you made it through this post and think your website could use some work, it’s okay! If you’d think you’d like some help, we’re here to chat anytime. We help Permanent Makeup artists with website design, Google ads, Social Media and Business Coaching.
Feel free to check out our own PMU studio and Training Academy, True Life Canvas on Facebook or our website. You can also take a look through our portfolio of other PMU artists who have trusted us to build their websites and social media presence here.
If you’d like us to do a complete audit on your website, send us a message so that we can turn your website into a client booking machine!