Simply having a presence online isn’t enough. To be competitive, your business must have a great web presence. After all, with more than 1.5 billion websites to choose from, your potential customers aren’t going to spend time on your site if it offers a below-par experience.
With the internet, businesses get what they put in. By taking a considered, professional approach to your web presence, you can ensure that your business has all the staples that encourage leads and conversions. In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the key essentials to tick off, which in turn should lead to an online presence that works for your brand, not against it.
8 Staples of a Great Web Presence
1. Easy to Find
Your online presence won’t amount to much if your target audience can’t find your website. First of all, it’s important to have a domain name that’s both in line with your brand and easy to remember.
It’s also vitally important to invest in your website’s search engine optimization (SEO), which will ensure that Google and other search engines can find and rank your website.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that ranking highly on Google really can be the difference between a successful business and an unsuccessful business since a high ranking can quickly help generate quality leads, even if you’re just starting out.
2. Excellent Design
Of course, having Google push users towards your website is a good starting point, but it’s really only a starting point. It’s what they find once they’re on your website that matters the most. Ensuring that your website has excellent design is essential for making a positive first impression.
After all, if your visitors have a positive first impression of your website, then they’ll be much more likely to click around and see what you have to offer. Plus, great design also enhances the user experience and can even enhance SEO. Given the importance of your website’s design, it’s best to work with an experienced designer, rather than trying to do it yourself. They’ll work with you to come up with a modern, visually appealing that’s in line with your branding.
3. Valuable Content
You’ll want your website visitors to take action, such as making a purchase or getting in touch to enquire about your services. But your visitors will have their own needs, too. They’ll hope to get something valuable from visiting your website. And the easiest way to ensure that they get that is to offer valuable content.
Putting together resources such as blogs, product descriptions, how-to guides, and other content can offer real value to your website visitors, and can also help demonstrate your expertise. After all, you might know that you’re an expert in whatever field it is in which you operate, but your visitors won’t automatically know that unless you show them. Well-thought-out content can also offer a massive boost to your SEO. Google loves well-researched, quality content, and will reward your efforts by giving your search engine ranking a boost.
4. Practical Information
It’s easy to get carried away with adding bells and whistles to your website in the hope that it’ll make it more exciting and engaging. But remember that many of your visitors will come to your website to get practical information, such as information about your products, your contact information, shipping costs, things like that. Making this information easily accessible is essential for providing a great user experience, especially since there aren’t too many things that annoy web users more than when it’s difficult to find the simple information that they’re looking for.
5. Social Media Success
It’s more important than ever that brands have a presence on social media. After all, not only are there more social media users than ever before, but they’re also spending more time than ever on those sites, too. Whatever audience you’re trying to attract, you can be confident that they’re using social media. It takes time to build a social media audience, but even though competition can be tough, it’s very much possible. It’s important to take a considered, expert approach to doing so, however. If you don’t have the budget to hire an in-house social media manager, then look at outsourcing the task to someone else.
6. Online Reviews and Testimonials
Your target audience will pay a lot of attention to the information that they find on your website. But they’ll also look for signs that other people have had a good experience with your brand. Online reviews can make all the difference between someone becoming a customer and buying from a competitor, so it’s worthwhile encouraging your happy customers to write reviews on Google and other review sites. You can also post any customer testimonials you’ve received on your website, too.
7. Investigating New Approaches
The internet is dynamic and always in flux. What was popular and effective a couple of years ago may well be obsolete today. Ensuring your business has a great web presence is about ensuring that it caters to today’s web users, not yesterday’s. It’s recommended to periodically check the trending web approaches, and then integrate them into your website. For example, video marketing has become hugely popular recently, so one approach could be to put together how-to videos and other video content and then put them on your website and YouTube channel.
8. Monitoring Performance and Making Adjustments
Finally, while it’s possible that you get every detail of your website correct at the first time of asking, it’s more likely that there’ll be some factors that work, and some others that don’t. It’s important to monitor the performance of your website, and then make any adjustments if needed. For example, there may be some of your web pages that perform well and others that visitors don’t engage with. It can also be highly useful to check where your visitors are coming from (search, referrals, paid search) since that can tell which areas you need to focus on a little more.
Final Thoughts
And there we have it! Take these on board, and you’ll soon have a great web presence that benefits both your brand and target audience.
