Developing an engaging web presence is critical for sustainable business growth. You may be excited about your social media pages, but if your website does not appeal to your audience, your digital marketing efforts will not be fruitful enough. Upon realizing this, companies are now rapidly investing in web development to be the readily available and popular choice for their tech-savvy consumers.
The necessity of having a good website is no more a point of contention, the concern at this point is how to develop a website that is of optimum value for your business.
Technology as an enabler keeps evolving and keeps creating innovative ways to market businesses on the internet.
The secret to success is in being useful, relevant, and unique.
There are millions of sites on the internet struggling to engage with their audience. Yet small businesses have moderate budgets to spend on their website, but the good news is that focusing on certain key principles when developing and managing your website, can guarantee a healthy return on investment.
In this article, we are sharing ten ways to ensure your website works as hard as you for your business.
1. Let your business drive your Web Development
Always remember your website is primarily a business tool rather than anything else and hence even quality designs should be driven by your business objectives. Your existing customers and potential clients check you out from here and this is also the primary touch point of all your business associates and interested audience. So this serves as the first feel of your brand identity and is further defined in your marketing, stationery, brochures and other brand collateral.
2. Review and analyze
Your website may be to your satisfaction, but it’s vital to review it regularly to ensure that it meets your needs and that of your customers today.
Does your site reflect changes in the marketplace? Does it still address your target market? Are the design, content and graphics still relevant? Does it accurately showcase your business?
If your website has been up and running for several years, it's a challenge to remain objective, so it is always advisable to get an opinion from an outside source who can bring a new perspective.
3. Differentiate through design
People have short attention span and they quickly leave a site that doesn’t arrest their attention - and that’s where great design becomes the differentiating factor. Thanks to faster broadband speeds and improved software, website design has evolved hugely. Graphics and images can now be larger and sharper, and are a key element of establishing and reinforcing your branding and identity.
Great design is a way to really differentiate yourself from the competition, so ensure your site looks attractive and professional, apart from being functional. Ultimately, this will help to increase visitors, page view rates - and securing new business.
4. Mark your priorities
It’s always necessary to have a clear strategy when marketing any aspect of your business. Marketing your website can not be different. Set short, medium and long-term goals but be aware that your web designer may not be the best person to help you achieve them. Designers often lack experience in SEO, which means that any optimisation of title and meta tags will be at a basic level and unlikely to generate the traffic that an active marketing strategy devised with an SEO/ web marketing specialist will achieve.
5. Optimize for digital marketing
The internet is essentially demand-driven. SEO and other forms of web-based marketing such as Google Adwords are better targeted than offline advertising. This means that people who are actively searching for your product or service might be directed towards your site - so that you may get assured return on investment on the internet than advertising in a magazine. Optimize your website for your digital marketing campaigns to drive better RoI.
6. Optimizing your website for search results
People generally search for products or services online using a search engine such a s Google. So it’s crucial for your website to be picked up by them. There may be a general perception that only larger businesses can achieve ranking on page one of Google’s listings instead of small and medium companies. Whereas the fact remains that Google ranks are based on SEO techniques that need to be regularly followed and practiced. There is an amount of time necessary for getting to the first page of search ranking and be there.
The process is complicated as the search engines are constantly changing their analytics methods and algorithms. This demands an ongoing SEO effort on your website. It also requires off-site SEO optimization which involves linking to and from other sites, carrying out social media marketing and creating blogs and current content to enhance your site’s overall online influence.
7. Implement a continuous Development Process
Developing a website is a continuous process. However a lot of people fail to understand the difference between a brochure and a website. For them their website is a finished project and hence they miss out on the advantages of an active website which relies on updating their present websites through changing and adding relevant content. This can be done by writing blogs, adding to news sections and creating links to and from your site.
Clients, visitors and search engines are attracted towards active and fresh websites.
When Google finds that content is being updated, it will visit a site more often, revising listings which is instrumental in improving search results rankings. Writing relevant content that features the most popular key search phrases on Google also goes a long way to help with SEO. These may refer to specific products or services, geographical areas or even a specific customer requirement.
8. Build an agile website
From time to time, companies come across relatively new strategies in web marketing including social media, YouTube and pay-per-click. Though doing all of these is tempting but not always feasible. Financial and time constraints limit you to choose the media and tactics most suitable for your business.
Building an agile website helps you keep your website ready with the new integrations and other changes required to stay on top of your game. An agile website is a long term investment that has the potential for a much higher and sustainable RoI down the road.
9. Build mobile friendly website
Popularity of smartphones and tablets as a means for accessing the internet has risen rapidly and will only increase in the foreseeable future. Bearing this in mind while setting up or reviewing a website is crucial for maximum reach. A mobile-friendly site is easily accessible for mobile users and helps to increase sales and improves your website ranking, particularly if your business is primarily in B2C domain. From a user perspective, it needs to capture the key elements of your principal site, offering a point and click functionality that allows the user to access the aspects that interest them.
10. Encourage your audience to take action (CTA)
Once you are over with the crucial task of creating an attractive, functional website that beats the clutter and can be easily found, the next step should be to encourage your visitors to take action. Insert and highlight plenty of calls to action (CTAs) throughout your website. Adding reminders to “phone us” or “email us” or “click here to buy” etc. is simple and amazingly effective.
Your website development should always be a continuous process. As search engines continue to evolve, content and SEO need to be regularly revisited. The best web developers work in partnership with the website owner to help them “make their website happen”, with constant review, dialogue and improvement.
Get Started with Your Web Development with The Rolling Circle
If you’ve been considering getting started with web development activities for growing your business, then consider hiring us.
#WebDevelopment #DigitalMarketing #ContentDevelopment #BusinessGrowth #WebDesign #MobileAppDevelopment #TechnologyDevelopment #DevOps