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Is your website bringing you business?
A couple of years ago, companies were scrambling to create websites and have a presence on the world wide web. Today many of those same companies have kept the same website structure which largely resembles an online brochure. They have not come to realize everything a website can offer and how a website can help in today's recessionary marketplace.
In looking at your website you simply need to ask a few simple questions to determine if you are using your website wisely.
- Would I use it?
- Does it project a corporate image our company reinforces?
- Does it save the company money?
- Does it pre-sell our company and products to consumers?
- Does it offer the consumer a reason to return to it?
- Does it do all it can do to help our sales team make the sale?
- Does it make our customers feel like we care?
- Does it go beyond the website to help the company?
There are many ways to create a site that does all of the above. However, in the real world companies have budgets and so does your website project.
· The most important key to creating a website that will help your company thrive is to have a professional evaluate your current site. The key here is not to reinvent the wheel, but to honestly answer the questions above from an objective standpoint. It may be smarter to build on the existing site than to start from scratch. Your current site may have a lot of good content and yet it could be more efficiently implemented or displayed. Or in the opposite situation, the look of your site may not be the problem, but it may lack enough substance for the audience.
· A true professional website project manager will solicit ideas from your staff. Even the best website designer in the world does not know your business and your customers like you do, so it is important that your management team participates in the evaluation of the website and more important that they help brainstorm on what your new site should include. They have all shopped the competition and they are aware from potential customers as to how your company is perceived by the public. This insight in the right hands will help the web team create a site that is not only responsive to the staff's ideas but also more helpful to the consumer. More importantly this step alone puts the staff on the side of the site when they see their ideas implemented. They will take pride in the site, submit profitable ideas and point more traffic to your site.
· A website without contact collection is a failed site. If you don't have a way to cultivate the leads from the site visitors you need a project manager who will come up with a way to get your site visitors to impart their contact information so you can follow them up with other important information that your company wants them to know. A site that is just nice to look at is a wasted site. It must impress the visitor and encourage them to use the site as a resource over and over again. This will cause them to tell a friend and increase your web traffic, which will in turn affect your search rankings and bring you more business.
· If your website is not tracking your web traffic, you may be wasting your dollars and resources. If you don't know what your web traffic is, how will you know if it is surveying your purpose or if changes you make on it improve or reduce your site traffic? Are more people visiting your site than a month ago or a year ago? Does seasonality play a role? Can you change that? If your traffic is not up, consider the quality of your website, or the way you are using it with your advertising and marketing efforts. A website needs to be an active part of your marketing and marketing efforts. It is the quickest way to free public relations and it can change and update your promotions overnight, without incurring costly printing and art fees. A good website is worth its weight in gold and it can be sold in many cases as an important asset to your business.
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