When you are running a consulting business, your website should sell your individual talents, skills, knowledge, experience, and innovative solutions. Your professional consulting website is your opportunity to create a strong online presence, clearly exhibit your unique strengths, establish your authority status, and persuade clients to work with you.

With many consultants working as sole traders or in boutique firms, it’s essential to make your online marketing as effective as possible and have your website acting as a sales tool for you.

Having a website designed to sell your expertise maximizes your chances of being seriously considered for consultant roles. Don’t make the mistake of treating your website as a simple online brochure and assuming your expertise will sell itself. A professional website is one of your most critical marketing tools to open the door to lucrative opportunities.

Deliver informative, client-focused content

In order to make your consulting website succeed and boost its search engine rankings, you will need to continually add informative content that is focused on offering advice, tips, and solutions for your prospective clients.

You can also engage your visitors in the content even more by transforming it into an info graphic. Info graphics are a great way to communicate ideas in a way that is visually appealing and easy to understand.

Make it easy to interact and get in touch

As a consultant, you might offer clients the chance to book a free one-on-one 30 minute consultation with you, so that you can get to know each other. Put a clear call-to-action on your site, where people can click to take the next step.

For each post on your blog or website, you should give the option for clients to share the information on social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. Not only will this help create engagement for your visitors, but it will also drive traffic to your consultant website for generating solid leads.

Position yourself as an expert

Your potential clients want to be confident that they are hiring an expert. That’s usually the reason for bringing a consultant on board – because the organization doesn’t have the in-house knowledge, capacity or expertise to solve a particular problem. It is far better to show visitors that you are an expert than to tell them.

Build client relationships

One of the greatest parts of having a consultant website is having the ability to easily nurture both new and old relationships with clients. We suggest that you should send clients high-value content at regular intervals to convince them you have what it takes to help them, without going overboard.

Consultants should always use emails, online newsletters, blog posts, webinars, and other simple web-related tools to easily stay in touch with clients. You may want to offer a free valuable video, audio, or article series on an interesting topic to draw in potential clients. Notifying clients when you are offering a new service or post is how you develop strong client relationships.

Map a clear path through your website

Your website should have a clear idea of what action you want your visitor to take next. From the home page, if you’ve captured your potential client’s interest initially, you may want to move them on to find out more about your services. From the services page, you could lead them to some case studies of clients you have helped. Next, you could reinforce your social proof by leading them to testimonials. Throughout every page, you want to offer a clear opportunity for potential clients to make contact with you or take the next step to securing your services. Guiding visitors through your website is done by a combination of good user interface (UI) design and the use of clear calls-to-action (CTAs).