Get the best out of your business website

Websites give businesses boundary-less presence globally as well as locally. This means more customers can reach your business online anytime from anywhere there is internet connectivity.

With billions of web pages visited by billions of web users frequently using different devices, your business website must be professionally-designed and well-managed so it does not get lost in the intricate clutter of the World Wide Web (www). 

Your business website is a long-term investment which will yield returns when you apply the right strategies and best practices.

How to get the best out of your business website

Before you can get the best results from your business website, you must consider the following factors:

Know your customers and market: Clearly, you need to know the people who (want to) patronise your products and services to inform the need to have a website.

You must find out if your customers use the web, have access to internet, and believe in doing business online.

Your website gives your business a virtual presence in markets where you do not have physical presence. Your website attracts potential partners to your business as well.

Engage professional developers: Resist the temptation of getting just any developer to work on your website. Since your website is your virtual business presence or premises, you must invest in how it looks and feels like.

You need professional developers who will design your website considering your target customers, services and departments of your business. You must brief them about your business and which part of the business you want to project more online. They will design for the right web platforms your customers use; either laptops or mobile devices.

Develop a strategy for your website: Never have a website without a strategy for managing it. You must have clearly defined and achievable objectives. Know when and what to post on your website to attract the attention of your target customers online.

Strategy guides how you manage and measure the effectiveness of your web presence. Get a professional digital media strategist to audit your business and develop a strategy for managing your web presence.

Simple and memorable web addresses: A great website must have a simple and easy-to-recollect web address (or domain name). Have the name of your business as (or as part) of the website address.

You can equally have web address for your products that have fast growing or huge consumer base. This must have a connection to and from your main business website. Use emails addresses that easy to remember such as info@abcompany.com or buy@abfurniture.com. Be creative with the names and addresses.

Use a secure web hosting: Host your website on a secure server so hackers cannot temper with your web presence. Use the right hosting package so the website can take the traffic that comes to it from the visitors.

A secure hosting enables the integration of payment platforms into your business (or ecommerce) website and also protect the information the web visitors share with you online. Do not compromise.

Intelligent analytics functionality:

Know how people engage with your website and the interactions happening on your page. Use the analytics backend on your website or integrate Google Analytics solution for your website.

Get to know the demography of visitors, the contents they are consuming, the time they consume the contents and how you can create more engaging contents. It helps to measure your effectiveness. Ask your developer.

Attractive landing pages:

A landing page is the first (or home) page people see when they visit your website by typing in your website address (or URL) or click on a promoted link to a page. A landing page must have visually strong design, well-written copy (text) and easy navigation.

There must be less clutter on landing pages so the web visitor will not be confused with a lot of contents to read or links to click. When running campaigns, it is important that link to your website must direct people to the respective landing page. It works.

Share creative and relevant contents: Content is the life of your web presence. Attract more web visitors to spend more time on your website and also share the contents to their social media pages or websites. Pay professionals to develop contents for your website.

Your content is the voice and personality of your business. It helps search engines to find your website easily when visitors search for your services. Be frequent in sharing contents to stay ‘alive’ and relevant online. Blog on your website.

High visitor or user experience:

A great website design gives high web visitor (user) experience. It enables people find information on your website faster and easier. This experience translates into a strong online brand visibility.

User experience is the result of great interface design and relevant contents. It projects the efficiency and ease of doing business with you offline. Hold user experience in high esteem by demanding it in the designing stage.

Social media links: Grow your web presence by having links to the popular and high-traffic social media platforms where your customers socialize with their friends.

These social media links enable the visitors share your website contents or pages with their friends, fans or followers on their social media pages.

Since social media is now the number one activity on the web, having users spend billions of minutes every month on them, you must have a share of that time-pie. Use social media plugins on your website.

Direct traffic to your website:

You must have your website details on your business communication materials such as call cards, letterheads, brochures, flyers, branded cars, posters and other brand items.

Have fan pages on selected social media platforms and have links to your website by sharing your web address and contents there. Pay for web adverts on high-traffic local websites to direct traffic to your website using platforms like Google Ads. Search engines rank high traffic websites higher.

Collect web visitor information: Have forms to collect information from the potential customers who visit your website. It helps in acquiring more customers.

Get to know the people you are reaching with your website, who are interested in doing business with you. You can also send them discount deals or promotions by emails or SMS by using their contact details. Build a database of online visitors.

Website management team:

Having a business website is not enough without manager(s). Get the competent people with the relevant expertise to create contents, publish them on your website and measure the effectiveness of your web presence.

You can have a web master in-house or contract a trustworthy professional to manage your website. It is a department most businesses do not take seriously. Do not be one. 

Reiterate contents and pages: The web gives you the privilege of repeating the same contents at different times for better engagement and user experience. You can also redesign your web pages or edit contents as and when it is necessary. You can edit some contents or campaigns to optimize their engagement power. 

High conversion rate: As more people visit your website, it will translate into them knowing more about the offers of your business, subscribing to your newsletter, buying your products and referring others to you.

As a result, your sales will shoot up and profit margins increase. The essence of your website is to have positive effect on your business and bottom-line. Great web presence results in high conversion rate; that is, achieving your objectives.

Technology Consultant, Digital/Social Media Strategist and Trainer.

WhatsApp: 0264887887