There are many things an aviation web site can do these days.
But many fail at these three critical tasks, and the aviation companies that are paying their increasing bills for hosting, security and upkeep are frankly NOT getting their money’s worth.
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There has been a lot of evolution in websites.
There are MANY tasks that an aviation web site can accomplish. They can deliver custom information to current customers, provide detailed product information, or even have real-time calculators, multimedia tools and even artificial intelligence-driven chat bots.
It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle, or to find that you’ve got “too many gadgets” on your site, and you end up with something that has grown by accretion over the years into something that may have become clunky, slow, and not very good at its primary roles.
What are an aviation web site’s primary roles?
We think there are three primary tasks every aviation website should be VERY good at. A great website must:
- Get found using specific keywords
- Educate prospective buyers
- Get prospects to contact you.
Unfortunately, most of the websites that we see that are over about three years old become less effective at one or all of these tasks, and some maintenance, repair and/or overhaul is probably in order.
1. Get found using specific keywords.
In the old Yellow Pages, we used to be able to look up things we needed by topic. If we needed an electrician, we could turn to the “e”s and flip pages alphabetically until we found what we wanted.
Nowadays, people tend to use search engines like Google instead of the yellow pages.
We type in some words and hope to find something that gives us the information we need or solves our problem.
How do we decide which keywords or topics for our website?
We use three factors:
- Relevance.
You can determine this for yourself. What do YOU commonly call your product or service? What do your customers’ call it? - Popularity.
You may find that there are two similar words that are both equally relevant, like “flight attendant school” versus “flight attendant training.” If that’s the case, pick the more popular term! - Competition.
If you still have a number of terms that are equally relevant and popular, you can select terms that have less competition. If all of your competitors are gunning for one particular term, you might have better results with an equally relevant and popular keyword that has less competition. You might be the only one, or one of very few, websites listed under a keyword with less competition.
2. Educate Prospects and Customers.
Once customers get to your site, they’re looking for specific information.
And, surprise, they have little or no interest in your company, or even in your product.
Unless you explain clearly at first glance at your home page HOW YOU CAN HELP SOLVE THEIR PROBLEM.
Unfortunately, most aviation websites make the very common error – talking too much about themselves.
Your web site is NOT your conference room or letterhead. It should not assume that people already have any particular attachment to your logo, your founder, or your mission statement.
Visitors have NO interest in your company unless you can solve their particular problem.
3. Get Prospects to Contact You
We are often surprised at how difficult it can be to find contact information on a website.
Phone numbers that aren’t clickable, no physical address on the home page, having to click a “contact us” page to find out how to talk to a person . . . all of these things are very unpopular with business aviation consumers, who value convenience.
In any case, contacting you is probably the most profitable step a website visitor can take.
Make it easy for them by including a clickable phone number at the top of the page and complete contact information in the footer of every page. You never know when someone will want to print a page and hand it to a colleague.
Want a free web site audit?
Enter your information and we’ll provide an instant result for your aviation web site audit, and follow up with a more extensive audit to help see how you stack up for keywords and competitors that are important to you.
We’ll tell you what’s working, and what you can improve.
Often there are simple changes that will make a big difference to the way your website works to bring the right people to your website and help them find “all the right stuff!”
More Aviation Web Site Resources
Want to evaluate your own website and/or service provider?
Aviation Website Refresh Service
Other articles about Aviation Web Design:
ABCI Responsive Web Design Process
Aviation Website Not Attracting Customers
How to Get Attention on the Web
Best Aviation Websites for Marketing
Aviation Website Design – What Works?
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