Here are some important things to keep in mind to help make your website a valuable and effective marketing and business tool.
Design and Branding
Think of your website as the gateway to your company. Your site is the first impression Internet users will have of your business. When designing your site, or working with a professional website builder, be sure to consider the “brand essence” of your product or service and how your site will present that brand image to your target market.
It’s important to make sure every aspect of the site conveys your brand. The more unique, professional, and interesting the branding efforts are, the more likely you are to make a deep and lasting impression in the minds of potential customers.
What to Include
The Internet is a never-ending, ever-growing sea of competition. Your site will not increase your business if you don’t include relevant and useful information. Anything that convinces your prospects to choose you over someone else or makes your company easier to work with should be included on the website. A complete list of products or services with brief descriptions, contact or order information, instructions and user manuals, company directory, and frequently asked questions are some examples.
Today, forward-looking companies use their websites as an opportunity to interact with their customer base, giving customers the ability to help themselves, ask for help, and even share likes and dislikes with other customers. By building internal applications called wikis, smart marketers stimulate open collaboration between customers and staff, allowing the company to listen and participate in the conversation. This open dialogue not only fosters good will, but often leads to improved products or services.
Eliminate the Guesswork
A successful website is one in which brilliant design, relevant content, and functionality are perfectly seamless. That means that it needs to be well-planned with a logical and user-friendly navigation structure. There are a few ways to go about this. One essential is a searchable database. Cross-referencing products and services also helps. Do whatever you can to make sure that content is meaningful and manageable. From a marketing perspective, a logical and efficient website conveys that you are a smart business that understands its customers.
Update Frequently
New information should hit the website right away. Some businesses don't realize that it is easier and faster to update a website than it is to keep print materials current. New database tools allow for immediate updates and give site visitors the ability to make their own custom catalogs based on need.
Website builders can create customized administrative tools to help keep your database content up-to-date. These tools should be user-friendly so current staff can update the site regularly. If that’s not possible, your web partner should be able to do it for you.
Effective web development is usually best left to professional website builders. A reputable developer will want to work closely with you. You have a responsibility to communicate your needs to the developer, and you should remember these simple rules:
- Your brand image will define the impression you make on web users.
- Include as much helpful and relevant information as possible.
- Include a plan for content management so you can update regularly.
- Use the site to strengthen and build customer relationships.
Building an effective website is one hurdle, but getting qualified visitors to your site is a completely different challenge. Your website should be built on a solid foundation for search engine optimization, or SEO.
According to statistics, over 60% of Internet users start their web browsing at a search engine, with Google being the most popular “start page”. Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Ask, etc. spend every minute of every day crawling the sites and collecting information they deem important for their searching visitors.
Your website is facing competition every day from your competitors for search engine indexing and relevancy. You want Google to visit your site and realize that your content has more relevancy than your competitors, which means you rank higher in the search engine results for someone looking for your goods or services.
Search engine optimization defines the processes and techniques used by search professionals to assist in increasing the search engine relevancy of a website. Whether through content creation, proper coding of web pages, or link popularity campaigns, search optimization professionals have the necessary skill sets that will help your site improve its search engine results page (SERP) performance, while safely negotiating the intricacies of search engine algorithms so as not to get you blacklisted from search engines indefinitely.
A good development partner should do more than work with you to create effective landing pages and pages for your PPC ads. They should also have the ability to provide analytic services to track your SEO and PPC campaigns and tweak your settings for optimal, money-making performance.
Keep these thoughts in mind and your company website will be your most valuable marketing and business tool.
About the Author
Nicolas Dinatale is Manager of Interactive Services for Harrison Leifer DiMarco, a full-service marketing communications agency. Smart, strategically focused, and creatively driven, HLD takes responsibility, takes ownership, and takes action in applying every discipline of a well-integrated communications arsenal, including branding, advertising, public relations, interactive, packaging and media. HLD has offices in Rockville Centre, NY; New York City; and Orlando, FL. For more information on HLD, visit www.hldnow.com.
