Seven Critical Features That Your MSP Website MUST Have

A website is a key component to any business’ marketing these days. For MSPs, there are a lot of options out there for pre-built or templated websites. This includes our Ultimate MSP Website, which comes with over 100 pages of content to choose from, several different designs, and a ton of features. In addition, we can also build custom websites. Let’s explore the differences.

The templated approach is often seen as the inferior option. The assumption is often made that templated websites don’t perform as well, or that you’ll look just like your competitor down the road. Comparatively, a custom website is presumed to be more expensive, and takes longer to build.

There are also concerns--especially in the managed services space--that the marketing professionals who create these templates aren’t considering the many services that, if they are offered, can make a company stand out amongst its competition. Other assumptions between custom and templated websites include the level of customization that is possible with each, and how much attention is spent putting the templates together, as compared to developing a completely new website.

Templated Website Concerns and Counterpoints

These assumptions might make the custom website seem like the only reasonable option. However, building a fully-custom website is much more expensive than a smaller MSP may be able to budget, at least initially. The truth is, though, is that starting with a prebuilt MSP website is a fine option for almost any MSP.

Do some templates have issues? Of course. Are some providers more helpful and diligent than others? Absolutely. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t start with a templated website. You just need to find someone who will help you make the most of yours. We offer both custom and templated websites. For custom projects, we typically start with one of the thousands of third-party website templates out there… but this doesn’t mean that we short-change our templated websites.

You Don’t Have to be One-of-a-Kind

Let’s face it, most of what you do isn’t a whole lot different than other MSPs out there. Do you offer a backup solution? Is it one of the handful of channel backup vendors out there? Do you have an RMM tool? Are you the only one using that RMM tool?

Most MSPs have pretty similar service stacks. That doesn’t mean you can’t stand out, but your general everyday offering probably isn’t doing the heavy lifting for you. Instead, your expertise, your specializations, and the level to which you satisfy clients is what makes all the difference.

The Ultimate MSP Website can convey that just as easily as a custom website.

Sure, you aren’t going to be the only company who uses one of our MSP Website templates. That’s why we offer a variety of different MSP Website Themes that we provide to our clients on a first-come, first-serve basis in their area. This way, your prospective clients won’t discover that you and a potential competitor have similar websites. We make a best effort during the sales process to prevent competing MSPs from having the same design.

That said though, your prospects aren’t examining the design of every MSP’s site across the Internet. They don’t surf around for MSPs every day. If you’ve managed to catch their attention with your content and are providing the value they’re looking for, they probably won’t feel too motivated to seek out another.

Fortunately, you’ve been getting in front of prospects with direct mail, social media, soft calls, and other marketing efforts, right? That’s what will make you truly stand out.

Custom or Not - Here’s What It Takes to Have a Good Website

As we’re working on a website for a managed service provider, we are committed to a pretty comprehensive list of features and functions that we have found to be crucial for any website’s success… whether it’s based on a template, or built as a custom website.

1. Your Website Needs to be Easy to Use

Let’s face it… your professional audience isn’t likely to stick around if your website is confusing or hard to use.

This may sound counter-intuitive, but even ancient-looking websites can still perform moderately well, as long as they are easy to get around for most users (keep in mind, older, non-responsive sites do tend to alienate traffic on mobile devices).

You need to put out the best possible representation of your business in order to convince them to stick around. Your visitors also won’t stick around if they can’t find what they are looking for easily. This makes it crucial to create a logical navigational system that allows your visitors to quickly find what they are looking for. They key takeaway? Don’t overcomplicate things.

2. Content is Key

In order for your visitors to find what they are looking for, it also has to be there. As an MSP especially, you need to provide plenty of information about what you do as a provider and how your audience can benefit from it. Not only will this make your website more effective, if done properly, it can help convince Google’s algorithms to show your website higher in its search results.

3. Your Website Needs to Look Good on Mobile Devices

It needs to be mobile-friendly (responsive) as a huge amount (more than half) of web traffic today is generated through smartphones and other mobile devices. If your website doesn’t look good on these devices, you’ll be alienating a large percentage of your potential audience. Moreover, Google and the other search engines place a high value on mobile-friendliness and may even penalize you if it’s not.

4. You Need to Drive Your Audience to Value Through Calls-to-Action

Returning to content momentarily; you need to be able to entice your audience to want to learn more… and to be willing to tell you a bit about themselves in the process. By utilizing CTAs that offer valuable bonuses to your audience--things like complimentary network audits or exclusive whitepapers and other content--you can collect their information as you market your services to them.

5. Show Off Your MSP’s Praises

Your website should be your business’ most successful converter of prospects into paying clients, which means you need to add a few reports of what you have done to all the content dedicated to what you can do. One of the most effective means of doing so is by sharing the reviews of your other clients. Collecting testimonials and encouraging these happy customers to share their experience can provide some considerable social proof to your audience.

6. Show Off Your MSP, Too

Your website is a great place to share what your company is going to be doing around the community at large. Is a local business showcase coming up? There’s a value to be had as an MSP when you sponsor a local event. Register to attend, and advertise your impending attendance on your website (and your social media, too). Any company news should also be shared in this way. If nothing else, it’ll remind your social media followers about you that little bit more, and might draw them back to your website.

7. Blog Content is Great Content

Arguably, your website’s blog is one of its most important components. Not only does it help to educate your audience a little more about your services, why they are important, and how they can help their businesses, there are also search engine optimization benefits to consider. Not only will more content give your website more opportunities to be spotted by search engines, keeping your website’s content fresh provides additional SEO benefits.

However, these blogs can be time-consuming to write, edit, proof, post, and share out, let alone doing so after building out an entire website. Why spend time that you should be investing into your business processes when our team of professionals can handle all of this... and at a real bargain for you. Between our blog service and the huge amount of other features that our websites (both template and custom) can provide you to assist your MSP marketing, you’ll save time and money!

8. Keep It Simple!

Lots of slides, carousels, weird menus, and other elements not only look bad, but they also hurt the user experience. This in turn can hurt SEO because visitors don’t stay on your website very long, increasing your bounce rate and decreasing your opportunities to convert them. Studies have shown that most users don’t look at your slideshow, except maybe the first slide. They don’t spend much time looking at your menu navigation, so complex 3-column menus aren’t really a good choice unless you are strictly e-commerce. The same goes for trying to “simplify” the experience by tucking important items into your drop down menus instead of having them front and center. Less is more, but the “less” needs to be done right.

A Final Thought

Your MSP website needs to work hard for you, but you don’t need to reinvent the wheel just to get the cart to move. Even a fully-custom built site will likely look similar to a really good templated site, because, well, certain design and content layout standards just work. If you go too far out of the box, it’s only going to make the experience annoying for your visitors.

Starting with a prebuilt MSP website is a good fit for most MSPs, and you can always build on it (or work with us to build on it) later. That can include custom content, custom images, new pages, case studies, and more.

To learn more about how we can boost your online presence even with a website that uses a pre-built template, reach out to us!