5 Things to Focus on When Building a Franchise Development Site

As consumer engagement continues to move online, so too does investor engagement. For franchise brands, a strong development website has become a crucial — perhaps the most crucial — tool available to attract and convert franchisee candidates.

Creating strong consumer-facing sites has long been a priority in the industry, but establishing an equally compelling online presence for prospective franchisees is a new project for many brands, and what makes for a good consumer site does not necessarily translate to a development site.

“It’s not enough to just clone your consumer site,” says Michael Palm, Senior Project Manager, Digital at franchise marketing and PR agency No Limit Agency*. [No Limit Agency is a sister company to 1851 Franchise.] Consumer sites and development sites have different audiences and different goals, and it’s essential that each site is designed specifically to appeal to those audiences and achieve those goals.

Palm says the most important design elements for a strong franchise development site can be boiled down to five key points. Any franchise interested in building or renovating its development site should keep each of these points in mind.

1. Conversion

Palm: The whole point of any development site is to get people to apply, so every design choice you make should work to drive conversion. You have to make signing up look easy and attractive on every page of the website. Franchisors have a million things they want candidates to know about their opportunity, and it’s easy for a website to get weighed down with too many pages, too much information and an unclear message. Candidates will have plenty of opportunities to learn the finer points of the opportunity as they move through the discovery process. The development site should present the headline selling points and focus on immediate conversion.

2. Calls to action

Palm: Here’s where that focus on conversion is most directly applied. A candidate looking through the website should know exactly what the next step is should they decide to apply. If you’re using your site to show what a great opportunity you have, but you’re not making it clear exactly what a candidate should be doing right now to get involved, then you’ve dropped the ball. “Call now,” “fill out an application,” “click here to have a representative get in touch” — whatever the process is, you need to be encouraging the candidate to take that next step throughout the entire experience.

3. Access and navigability

Palm: Your calls to action and your drive to conversion is wasted if the user can’t find the information they need. Make the most important information and forms readily accessible from any page on the site. If I’m browsing through the website and I click on a page to learn more about the brand's history and suddenly I’m not sure where the application form is, you risk losing me. I often recommend a locked header with a call to action and a link to the application that appears on every page.

4. Clean design

Palm: Here’s one that applies to just about any website, but it’s especially important when you are trying to drive conversion, as you are with a development site. Minimalism is not just the most popular style right now, it’s an important way to keep your message and calls to action clear. Candidates are likely looking through a number of development sites for a number of brands. You have to assume their patience is low. They aren’t going to want to dig through multiple pages to research your brand. Keep it simple, keep it short and keep it clear.

5. Consistent branding

Palm: This is where it gets a little tricky for some brands. You want the branding of your development site to match your overall branding, but you’ve got to keep your audience in mind, which in the case of your development site is likely completely different audience than you are typically advertising to. You aren’t selling someone a $10 meal, you are selling them a $1 million restaurant. That’s particularly important to keep in mind when you are selecting images for the site. Attractive photography of food may go a long way on the consumer site, but you want to sell the business itself on the development site. Photography of the interior and exterior of the building will help the candidate imagine what they will actually be owning. I also really like to focus on people. Whenever possible, I like to show franchisees and the executive team to put actual human faces to the experience and show candidates who they’d be working with.