Getting The Most Out Of Your Website

There are far too many people that think that having a website will automatically get traffic and exposure. This could not be further from the truth. Having a business website is only half the job done. It is used in order to generate value for your business but itself does not generate value by simply owning it.

Introduction

Your website is essentially an asset similar to any other fixed asset. On one hand it is a strong marketing tool that your customers engage with. You have full control over what message you want to share with your customers with your full branding. On the other hand, people need to actually visit the website for it to serve its true purpose. If nobody knows you have a website, it doesn’t matter how good your website is.

Your website needs to be the home of your business in the online space. This is where a customer’s questions are asked and answered. You have your full-service offerings and what makes your business special or unique in its industry. It is also used to persuade the customer to make a purchase by enhancing the following factors, trust, professionalism, and affordability.

Trust Factor

The reasons why someone will trust your business will vary but fairly similar. It includes based on your industry, compliance/regulatory licensing or certifications, affiliations, and testimonials. Having these broadly displayed on your website is key.

Action points:

• Web Force clients get to request changes once or twice a month at no additional cost. Simply send us the above information and we will upload it in a professionally designed manner.
• Ask your clients or customers for reviews! This is important and you want real testimonies that can be linked back to Facebook, Google or another rating platform.
• If you work closely with another company, check if its ok to display that on your website. Even further, get them to add your company name and possibly link on their website.

Additional Action Points:

• If you are struggling to get your brand name out there, there are paid options available that we can use to display on popular websites. Speak to us and we can help you with a strategy.

Professionalism

How your website looks, and functions are critical to your customer. Navigation needs to be intuitive and predicable. The text and images need to be in line with your business and displayed in a harmonise fashion to create a pleasant experience for the user. Remember that when someone visits your website, they will be looking for specific information which needs to be easy to find. This could be your location, contact details, your services, or reasons to buy from you rather than someone else.

Action Points:

• Thankfully this is something we strongly consider while developing your website and most of the work is already done. However, your input please a big part in this. Should you have specific market advantages over your competitors you must let us know. An example would be “free shipping”, “locally sourced”, “30 years of experience”, “RMI Approved”, “24-hour turn-around time”.

Additional Action Points:

• Often there will be certain online tools or forms that are unique to your industry and serves and specific purpose. These keep clients engaged and provide more value further persuading them to turn to you. Examples of these are, custom online quotation tools, online ordering platform, questionnaire with dynamic results based on selections, bond or finance repayment tools and so on.

These are not included with our basic website packages so speak to us and we will provide you with a free quote.

Affordability

This is a bit more straightforward you could either display your costs or not. However, depending on the industry you may opt to speak to a potential customer instead. If you choose to display costs, these should include as much information about the value the customer is likely to receive.

Action Points:

• Do your research and make sure you are within the market price region. If you are more expensive than your competitors because you think you do a better job, make sure your emphasis workmanship, quality, and all that on your website.

Additional Action Points:

• If you are looking to schedule appointments with a potential customer, we can provide you with an online appointment booking calendar which customers can book themselves based on your availability.
• If you need dynamic costing tables or forms, these will save you time then having to manually do these for clients.

Simple Analogy

Here is a simple analogy to put things into perspective.

Business Premises	Website
Land on which the building is on	Domain Name www.yourbusiness.co.za
The building	The layout and design on the website The user friendliness and usability
The stuff inside the building	Your website content and features Written text, images, videos, diagrams

Each part is as important as the other. However, some may require more maintenance than others. Assuming you already have a website setup (if you don’t, get in touch with us), it would have been setup with these key building blocks. To help you structure your approach to what to do next, the following section shows you questions that you should ask yourself.

Questions Website Owners Should Ask Themselves

How does this compare to my competitors?

If your website does not compare with your competitors, you should speak to your website provider on how this can be improved or change to a more reputable provider. It is okay to work within a budget, which may impact the scale and features provided by a website provider, however my opinion is it should not impact the quality of work delivered.

You can even get friends or family to compare your website and provide an opinion. Criticism and feedback of any kind plays an important role for positive improvement.

Does my website uniquely identify my business brand?

Anyone visiting your website needs to immediately know the name of the business and remember your logo after they have left. Many people return to businesses they have seen or are familiar with.

Does my website deliver by business statement?

Your business statement is something that gives you the edge in your industry. Are you cheaper? Do you deliver for free nationwide? Do you offer additional features or benefits? You must have something that defines your business from the rest, or it will be easily forgotten. This message needs to dominant on your website.

How often will I be updating content on the website?

It’s not whether you should or shouldn’t, it is a must that you update your website content. There are two main reasons for this.

1. Visitors can see fresh content and informed of any news and announcements. This improves user engagement and more returning visitors.
2. Over a certain period of time, your website will mature with archives of content as well as you may even build upon new sections and pages. This helps bring a depth to your website and search engines loves this. This increases the likeness of you ranking higher on search engines.

What can I do on my website that I cannot do on my business social media pages?

This is where creativity comes in. A website is not just a place for your products/services and your contact information. As explained above, it needs to go beyond this. From the domain name to the layout and design to the content that is on the website. These all need to work together seamlessly to provide a good experience that a visitor will enjoy and remember you by.

You may also require custom features and development that provides unique information like quote calculator or reviews. You could even have a community to engage with in forums and blogs. Whichever they are, make it known and highlighted for visitors.

Summary

These are just some high-level questions and of course there will be others which I will add on as I am reminded of them. All these either directly or indirectly impact your overall SEO ranking. SEO specific tasks are basically the next step you naturally would take however, it is important to remember to be as organic and natural when working with your website. With the rapid raise of AI generated written and graphic content, Google and other search engines are quickly adapting the algorithms favour “human” generated content. Apart from that, it has always been a key objectives of search engines to return results that are meaning and relevant to a user.