In the world of business, there are firm believers in the power of a well-designed website. It can help you grow your business, reach a wider audience and ultimately increase your profits. However, a website is so much more than just a tool for your business. A website can become a virtual storefront that people visit when they want to buy your products, or it could become a personal blog that will grow your personal brand in addition to your company.
However, most business owners neglect the importance of their website and simply leave it up to their designers or interns to get something started. They imagine that, as long as there’s some content on their website and some features, they have that base covered and can move on to worry about other things in their business. This is completely the wrong way to think about it and, in most cases, can even be destructive to your company’s image. No one likes to see a website, only to find it barren and devoid of any useful content. They like to see that a company takes pride in its image and creates a website that is fitting of their status.
Startup Websites
The same thing applies to startups as well. No one wants to see a promising startup with a terrible website. They want to see that the startup is serious about what they’re doing and they want to be informed about every small detail. It goes without saying that if your startup company has a beautiful and informative website, you’ll have a much higher chance of success to break out of those startup chains and grow into a small or medium sized business.
So in order to unleash the potential of your business website, we’ve put together a list of tips and tricks that will launch your website up Google’s rankings and give you far more exposure than you could dream of.
Planning A Purpose For Your Website
One of the first things you should be thinking about is a proposed purpose for your website. This will usually change depending on what you sell, what services you offer or what kind of business you are. Typically, a website will be used to inform your visitors about what it is you do, what kind of services you offer and also a bit of backstory for your company. For instance, if you own a company that sells greeting cards, then you’ll most likely have a bit of information about how you started, pictures of the types of cards you sell and also some contact information. If you plan to sell your wares online, then you’ll probably have a module to help you sell your products through the internet.
That’s just one example and there are hundreds of other details that could be added, but the point is to have a starting point for your website. Even if you currently don’t have the knowledge to create a website or you don’t understand how websites work, you still want to write down a list of ideas to use. You can use other websites as a point of reference, or even look at your competitors to see what they are doing, what they offer, and how you can offer something better than them.
Start your brainstorming by looking at other websites of a similar nature. Keep a list of ideas that you want to implement on your website because this will be useful when you give it to a web designer or when you start to create your own website. Focus on the design aspects for now and don’t think about the technical side such as how much it will cost to host a website, how much bandwidth you will need and so on. Those details can be ironed out later once you’ve got a purpose for your website and all of its features lined out. Source
Choosing Whether To Do It Yourself Or Hire Someone Else
The next major hurdle to overcome is whether you want to hire someone to help you do the work or if you want to do it yourself. Doing it yourself is fairly difficult if you don’t have a background in design or websites. If you have an intern or employee with some experience then it could drastically cut down the costs of creating a website for your business, therefore improving efficiency. But this isn’t exactly the best option considering the quality of the website will be questionable at best.
This is why we would always recommend having your website be designed by a professional. Like you see here, most websites offer more than just a simple website design package. They also offer design elements such as logos, business cards and banners. Website design is a complicated procedure and it requires an extremely varied digital skill set in order to fully take advantage of. For instance, if you want to sell products on the internet, then you’ll need to set up an eCommerce module for your online store. Your website content will also need to be professionally written by a skilled writer. First impressions count, so if your customers see spelling mistakes, grammar errors or if the text doesn’t flow correctly, then it can be really off-putting.
Another advantage of hiring someone to do the work for you is the maintenance side of things. If you’re unsure how to maintain or monitor a website, then you’ll need a dedicated professional to help you ensure the information is up to date and that the website has a good uptime. You’ll also need someone to analyse activity so you can boost the productivity of your website to ensure you get a good return on your investment. For instance, if you monitor user activity and discover that very few of your visitors are actually finishing their orders, then it could indicate a flaw in the website or it could mean that something in the purchasing process, such as delivery costs, are putting off potential customers. With a dedicated specialist to help you monitor and maintain your website, you don’t need to worry so much about these points and you can put your faith in someone who has a lot of experience running websites.
Websites Aren’t Static Things
It’s important to remember that your website doesn’t remain static forever. It’s not just a place for you to list information and sell products, but also a living and breathing entity that you are expected to keep up to date and also use as a platform to promote and grow your business.
It’s for this reason that a lot of people in business associate their websites with social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Some companies go as far to link their websites with several social media accounts, and this is a viable strategy to obtain more exposure especially in a crowded industry with little room to breathe. This allows you to promote your business to a wider audience and also gives you a reason to post things on social media in an attempt to grow your company.
Another thing about websites is that they should have dedicated staff on hand to respond to the community. For instance, if you have product comment sections, then you are expected to respond to questions and answer any queries. If someone posts a fairly negative review of a product that you are selling on your website, then it’s a bad idea to completely remove the post in order to hide it from the public. Instead, respond to the negative review or criticism and work to either improve your product or debunk those false claims that have been posted on your product page.
If you think of your website as just a static asset that never changes, then you’ll never unlock the full potential of the website. You have to give your customers a reason to come back and not just for the sake of buying new products. Update your website with news, post on social media when you restock items or add a new product to your lineup, and respond to any feedback, criticism or queries that you receive on either your website or social media pages.
Blogging Is The Perfect Accompaniment To Your Website
People usually think of blogs as a standalone website. However, they have a lot to do with businesses and you’d be surprised to hear that very few business websites actually have blogs attached to them. However, there are plenty of reasons to attach a blog or even host a blog on your business website itself.
For starters, it’s a fantastic place to talk about new releases, news about your company or even speak about sales. It’s a brilliant place to get feedback from customers and you get to share your thoughts, read suggestions and ultimately grow your business by interacting with consumers. In addition, it also helps you gain a better page rank on Google. Search engines love to rank websites highly when they have lots of relevant information on their pages, so if you create plenty of original content, you’ll easily improve your relevancy to Google’s search algorithms assuming you make clever use of keywords and site linking.
I hope you enjoyed this article about unleashing the potential of your bootstrap business website with design and SEO.
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