A business needs a website for a variety of reasons which include selling products or services, self-promotion, attracting new audiences, recruit staff and build their reputation. But they need to be clear about their reasons for wanting a website and establish clear goals from the beginning.
Website marketing
If you have a business then you need a website marketing plan which should be part of your overall marketing strategy. This means a combination of online and offline marketing methods to achieve a pre-agreed set of objectives. These objectives may be to increase your reach, educate people about your business or simply attract new customers.
Professional impression
A website will help you to do this. But it needs to be a professionally built site which understands who your target audience is; their motivations, backgrounds and goals. A cheap, amateur site will look just that and projects the wrong image of your business. A website is your shop window which people will judge you on so get it wrong and you are guaranteed to leave a bad impression!
How to have a winning website
There are many web design agencies that will build you a professional site which is usable, satisfying and loved by Google. We are talking about a website which has a consistent 'look and feel', promotes brand identity and has been optimised for the search engines.
It will have concise, well written content with strong calls to action. A logical navigation and menu structure which helps visitors to find their way around the site.
It will have a clear layout with sensible use of white space which groups the information into accessible chunks. Images used to support but not dominate the content. It goes without saying that the content will be free from spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
No Flash intro pages, broken links, orphan pages, dodgy SEO or excessive banner ads. And don't forget to include contact information as not doing so may mean not getting that expensive contract. Your site needs to say that you are open for business and happy to help with any type of query. Your site is for your customers so ensure that they can find it, use it and like it.
Social media
Blogs, Twitter feeds and Facebook likes are popular features of a website. Social media can be an invaluable marketing tool for your business but make sure you have a strategy in place. Do not throw out the odd tweet now and again in the vain hope that this will attract customers. Take time to find out which social media tools suit your business, integrate them into your marketing plan and measure the results.
Conclusion: a professional website is easy to use, accessible, aesthetically pleasing, has a top position in the Google SERP and a logical checkout process (if it is an ecommerce site). There will be a set of analytics in place to measure conversion rates as part of a marketing strategy. And the site content will be updated on a regular basis.
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