Building a Franchise Development Website

Your development website is a critical part of the franchise sales process for a very simple reason: It’s how you’ll generate the most leads. 

Where do people go these days when they want to find out more about you or your business? They’re not going to call you or knock on your door. They’re going to use the internet — and it’s up to you to build a narrative for them to follow and guide them on their journey to becoming a lead. 

Here are a few key elements necessary to make your franchise development website a success.

Create a Separate URL for Your Brand

Your company has a website, but you also have franchise brands. Be sure to create a separate URL for each brand. 

The best reason to have a separate franchise website is that it’s the best way for a brand to control its own story and attract leads. Having franchise information on a main company website can be confusing to navigate and make it difficult to find the right answers. Having its own URL gives the brand space to flex its franchising muscles and give users the best possible experience.

From a practical standpoint, having a unique franchise website makes analyzing traffic and marketing efforts much easier. Plus, you can create specific campaigns that point people to the information they need and landing pages that retarget to your brand website. 

Many brands choose to use a microsite for their franchise website, which is a section of the main website that stands alone. It has its own subdomain and navigation, so it feels like a separate entity, but it’s still contained under the umbrella of the larger company.

Create Clear, Easy-to-Navigate Sections

The website is meant to facilitate the research of the buyer, so the sections you build should be clearly labeled and easy to understand. The sections should provide information that answers fundamental questions about the brand and the franchise opportunity. 

Key sections or pages to include in any franchise website are:

• Brand Mission & Vision.
• Who We Are (about the team).
• Why Our Product Stands Out (include some industry data).
• How We’re Growing & Why We Want You as a Franchisee.
• Cost to Open a Franchise & Your Earning Potential.
• Testimonials from Other Franchisees.

Once you build these fundamental basics, guide the user around your brand site with additional content that helps them feel comfortable with investing in your brand. Some examples might be a blog page, a page to put all your brand’s PR or even embedded social feeds. 

You play the tour guide. Give potential leads the tools and let them do the research. Once they’ve had their questions answered, they’re ready to move to the next step of the franchise sales process. 

Create an Inquiry Form and Call to Action 

The overall design and layout of the website should match the company’s branding, present the information in a clear and simple way and effectively guide users to a call to action. 

The form is the most critical part of your page’s layout. Again, if you didn’t have a separate URL for your brand, that would complicate things on your form — the important call-to-action for your leads. The buyer journey is different for everyone, and they should be presented with all the information specific to your brand before encountering a form to fill out for more direct contact. 

On your form, you might include some text to encourage leads to book an exploratory call with someone on the team, and you could offer a PDF download with brand and investment information as incentive.

Connect your form to free online appointment scheduling software, like Calendly, to book leads automatically. 

As you develop the website’s layout and design, always keep in mind that it should include all the tools necessary for a visitor to do the research on their own and easily get in touch with you when they’re ready to take things to the next level.

SEO Tips for Franchise Development Websites

When it comes to writing content for your website, start with the basics. You can go down the endless rabbit hole of Google algorithms later. If you haven’t already, come up with your buyer personas (people who you want to visit your website and buy your franchise), and think of the keywords and phrases they might use to find you. 

Use a keyword tool like Moz’s Keyword Explorer or Google’s Keyword Planner to get a sense of how popular those terms are and what the competition looks like. Then, incorporate these terms into your content organically. Blogs are a great way to increase the volume of content on your site and create content around these keywords.

Over time, you’ll see traffic to your site and conversions increase because you’re creating needed content that establishes you as an expert in your industry. And who doesn’t want to go into business with an expert?

Important Steps to Remember

Your brand website is so important, you’ll want to constantly tweak it and make adjustments to keep things looking fresh. Without an updated website, you’re relying on the rest of the internet to tell your story. And if you’re not telling your story and guiding users to your Why You/Why Now, you’re not going to be satisfied with the leads that come through to your website. 

Checklist:

• Send users directly to your brand page with a separate URL from your main site. 
• Make your website sections clear and easy to navigate. 
• Include additional content, like blogs, PR or social media.
• Make sure your website’s layout is a journey to a call to action. 
• Create a clear, effective form. 
• Keep your brand website updated and looking fresh.

Discover more about how to win at franchise development marketing by downloading our free white paper here.