Does Your Consultant Website have these 5 Essential Things? Create the best possible consultant website

Consultants and entrepreneurs work tirelessly to attract new clients to their businesses. Growing a client base is a necessity, but it doesn't need to be a headache. Having a powerful, feature-rich online business platform lifts much of that burden from business owners.

A solid web presence allows consultants to increase brand and business awareness; engage in a smart, productive way with current clients, and prove their trustworthiness to new clients with a professional showcase.

If you're a new consultant launching an online business platform, or already have a website but want to optimize it to increase your client base, it's critical your website include these five essentials.

1) Mobile-Optimized, Professional Showcase

As a consultant, the first impression you make upon potential clients is often through your website; it's imperative the website appear professional and trustworthy. When people first access your website, they should find a professional-looking website, with a clean design, attention-grabbing photos, and well-written, SEO-friendly copy.

Because an ever-increasing number of people access the internet through their smartphones or other mobile devices, it's necessary to have a mobile-optimized website, which is also optimized across different browsers, like Chrome and Safari.

2) Contact Management

Consultants strive to attract and keep new clients -- it's a constant priority. This means it's necessary to have a website with reliable contact management features. Contact management allows you to collect and store clients' contact information including names, telephone numbers, and email addresses. This knowledge allows you to easily reach out to customers, and keep track of your communication with them.

3) Customer Relationship Management and Advertising Optimization

Every consultant should have an online business platform that incorporates Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools. CRM grants consultants the ability to build and maintain positive relationships with their clients by tracking customer interactions on your website, tracking demand for particular services and monitoring growth. You should also have the ability to analyze certain types of communications and interactions so that you can then target particular clients with special offers and marketing campaigns. This can include email marketing, follow-up emails, loyalty programs and other low-cost marketing plans.

Moreover, a consultant's online platform should feature analytics tools that allow you to measure the effectiveness of advertising channels and efforts so that you can tweak them if needed.

4) Scheduling With Automatic Reminders

A consultant's success often depends on their availability and dependability in regard to scheduling and keeping appointments. A full-service online business platform must include an appointment scheduling tool that sends automatic reminders to clients. There is no need to lose time and money over missed appointments, and these features help ease those concerns.

5) Payment Management

Everyone want to get paid -- that's a given. Your online business platform should seamlessly incorporate payment via a variety of payment processing methods, including PayPal integration, as well as the ability to accept partial payments or to request a price quote and pay later. Additionally, you should have the ability to add discounts and accept gift card payments for added flexibility.

With these five essential features, your online business platform will be poised to deliver exceptional ROI. Rather than go it alone and try to build a website using a DIY tool or by hiring a developer, both of which can eat up an enormous amount of time and resources, consultants have another option.