UX refers to user experience. User experience describes how a person interacts with a product, system or service and their perception of the interaction. In franchise marketing, UX refers to the way a candidate interacts with your online collateral, particularly your website. Included in UX are qualities like page speed, navigation, readability and elements of design.
Your website’s UX has a huge impact on whether leads choose to convert or exit your page without taking a desired action, like reaching out to your team for more information. If your candidate has trouble navigating through your website or reaches a button that doesn’t work, they may not ever get a chance to see how awesome your franchise opportunity is before leaving the site.
To help you develop a user-friendly website that converts more franchise leads, we’re sharing some simple UX tips you can use to audit your existing website. And if you don’t have a dedicated franchise website… there’s no time like the present! We even know an agency that can help *wink wink*.
Your website needs to be easy to find.
Whether you’re a large franchise with widespread recognition or a newer franchise looking to expand, you’ll need to make it easy for candidates to locate your business online. A primary way to do this is by claiming a relevant URL. This will likely be a variant of “nameofbrandfranchise.com”. Try to keep the URL as simple and self-explanatory as possible so interested candidates can easily search for your website.
We also suggest linking your franchise site to your consumer site. Oftentimes, your consumer site will rank higher than your franchise site and you don’t want to miss out on candidates who clicked your consumer site by mistake. Plus, you never know, a brand loyalist can become your newest franchisee.
Take candidates on a journey.
Once candidates are on your website, you’ll want to take them through your franchise opportunity step-by-step. On the homepage, include top level information that highlights the best features of your franchise to pique candidates’ interest. On subsequent pages, you can go into greater detail about each of the benefits mentioned on the homepage.
Make it easy for candidates to skim pages with clear, compelling headlines and short descriptions when possible. Paragraphs should be broken up into digestible chunks so the candidate doesn’t feel overwhelmed by the amount of information.
Simplify navigation.
Some candidates will know exactly what they’re looking for when they enter your site and want to find that information fast. Others will want to explore your opportunity at their own pace. Make it easy for each of these groups to get to know your franchise opportunity by simplifying navigation.
Website navigation is composed of internal links that connect each page to one another. Not only does this internal link architecture help users navigate your site, but also allows search engines to easily index your site’s pages.
Ensure each page is properly labelled and create content hierarchies so you can sort each category by subject matter. For example, you may have training and support pages listed under the same primary navigation link. Think about the way you’d take a candidate through a presentation. This will help you organize the navigation in a way that makes sense.
Pay attention to site speed.
Website load time is how long it takes a webpage to fully load and appear on the screen. Have you ever entered a site only to find it takes 10 second to load? You may have clicked out of the site before giving it a chance to completely open. This may be what franchise leads do if your website isn’t optimized for speed.
According to Portent, the optimum load time is 0-4 seconds. Website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with additional second of loading time.
Strategically place call-to-action buttons.
Web users turn into franchise leads when they take a desired action on your site, like request more information or schedule a call with your team. To make sure potential candidates know how to take the next step, place calls to action, or CTAs, in highly visible places on your site. This will likely be at the top within your navigation bar, in a page’s header and at the bottom of each page.
Turn Franchise Leads into Franchise Owners
Ready to start earning and converting more franchise leads? Reach out to TSCA to learn how our franchise marketing expertise can help you grow your business.
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