What Do I Need In A Website?
Your website is an integral part of your business's digital solution. Customers who use a search engine to find your business products and services will be taken directly to your website. Those who find you on social media, will ultimately examine your website before they even make contact.
Therefore rule #1 - your website must look good, function correctly and give a pleasant user experience for your visitors.
Providing a variety of communication channels and functionality (like request a quote, ecommerce, news and announcements, document downloads, galleries etc) will provide a rich and easy experience for your end users.
Once your visitors are on your site, you as a business should have the ability to monitor what they do when they are navigating your pages - where do they come from, how did they find you, how long do they spend on which pages. All of this information is available to us via Analytics, so it is essential to have this integration in place - and to revisit it regularly, learn about your ideal clients and modify your site as necessary.
Search engines such as Google and Bing will direct a great deal of traffic to your site, so it is essential your site is Search Engine Friendly. This actually means human user friendly and the search engine algorithms monitor this, along with security, page load speeds, backlinks from other reputable sites, fresh, updated and relevant content and organic popularity.
Social media is one of the best way to find and attract new clients. Much of your website traffic will come from social media sites, so it is essential that you promote yourselves on all platforms to make the most of the opportunities for lead generation and nurturing.
Capturing contact information for all visitors enables you to screen and categorise leads, but also to nurture them, passing on useful and valuable information that is unique to your own product or service. Integrating a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Solution is vital for capturing and managing all your business leads and contacts. The beauty of a CRM is that for each client, you can see every communication you have had with them - whether via chatbot, email, logged call or video meeting.
Once your systems are in place, you will be ready to effectively and efficiently manage your customers. Getting new customers is one of any business's key pain points. All avenues such as word of mouth referrals, organic and paid advertising across a range of channels should be considered. Creating a marketing strategy up front will prevent wasted time and effort and overspend or incorrect targeting of ads.
Once your customers start arriving through your digital channels such as chatbots on your socials and website, contact us and download digital material forms, email channels, online sales and automated booking forms - your business will be able to manage the influx, even if you are a 1 person business.
Not only do you need to consider the content and systems that integrate with your website, it is important to choose a platform with quality Australian support, hosted in an Australian data centre with an Australian domain name. All of these things contribute to effective SEO and will ensure your site remain accessible to you.
Having access to update your own content and support that means you can get timely advice, fixes and updates is essential if you want to ensure business continuity and quality of service to your customers.
Where technical tasks are beyond you or you don't have time, outsourcing these will free you up to work on your business, strategies and delivery of quality service to existing and new customers.