A company’s website is one of the first exposures of the business that many potential customers are going to interact with before taking on your business. Even if the company is primarily run offline, a digital presence can and should be one of the powerful marketing tools to use for any business; one of the primary lead generating methods.
Although a website is one medium on which customers can look for the best-priced products or services around, it is also a digital version of your brand. Having a site can bring many pros and cons.
Here are a few things that most websites need for keeping the fluidity of online business optimal.
Tailor Your Website to Your Customers
Depending on the industry that the company specializes in and type of business morals it wants to preach, make a plan on customizing your site with work-related industry-appropriate content and easy tools for customers to use to find products or services.
Though, realistically if you are a small business or a start-up, regardless of the type of company it is, when it comes to web-based content for your business, are some basic items every website should make available to view.
5 Questions to Ask
When it comes to portraying your business to potential customers, these five W’s are a good place to start:
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Who is the business for?
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What does your business offer?
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When is your business available?
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Where are you located or where customers purchase your goods and services?
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Why is your business important to customers?
All visitors to your website should immediately identify exactly what your business is all about, whether they land on the homepage, product or services page or even a blog post.
Make sure your values, standards, and propositions take precedence on every page.
Website Security, Back-ups and Updates
Having security on your website doesn’t mean hiring security guards to monitor your server, it means you need to take precautions and plan to back up everything, occasionally and having virus protection if your website deals with files being uploaded.
If your website is insecure, then there may be a risk of loss of data, personal data and even loss of complete functionality. It is best to have anti-virus, firewall, real-time monitoring, content filtering, email protection and much more.
There are some that think there is an exaggerated obsession with security and it’s true in some circumstances, but it’s necessary when your customer’s credentials can be obtained by unauthorized access and that is not good for any business.
Having a Managed Network Security plan is the best way to tackle any potential website vulnerabilities; having a professional peer group working together, sharing ideas and problems solving is vital in all departments of a company.
For those who do not monitor and protect their systems to prevent disruption, should there be a problem, you will be the person to fault find and rectify the problems.
If a first-time visitor browses your website and can’t find their way around, then the likelihood of them sticking around or even coming back let alone become a customer is marginally slim.
It is part and parcel of website design to make the website easy to navigate so users can find what they’re looking for and checkout without problems with functionality, securely, and with the satisfaction that a customer would otherwise get when visiting a store in person.
When designing your website, whether it be for personal use or for business, think about:
- the colour pallets to be used
- themes,
- the size of icons, whether they are round edged or sharp
Website Content
Think about whether your content is direct, professional and affirmative or passive, open to debate and heavily rely on user-submitted content.
Or is the website idea is to lead customers indirectly to call or email you and discuss business?
Or do you want to engage with your customers on a personal level and elaborate on any services you may provide such as therapy or online mentoring?
Although this was a brief post with a few ideas, there are many more considerations to make.
Do you have a website and want to share any tips on how to keep it functional, easy to use and secure? What ideas do you want to share on how to have the best website for your business? Let us know in the comments below!
