Take your Business Online with a Professional Quality Website

Your business website has the power to make your business a success (Also a failure!).  Capable of reaching audiences a shop front never could, your business website will work well if you have a great, user friendly design and good digital marketing in place.  Potentially you can expand your business and develop your online brand.  Greatly improving your revenue stream in the process.

With this in mind here are some website tips to incorporate into your business website.

Think Holistically for a Better Business and Brand

Branding is influencing online business transactions and not just with your customers.  Both Bing and Google will give brands higher search engine placement, even if sites below them have better search engine optimisation in place.  So when you speak to your web deisgn team ensure they understand the importance of branding.  This includes professional quality logos, images, and with the web design itself. To this end you should ensure branding is consistant throughout your site design.

Take Inspiration from your Competitors

Before you embark on a web design for your business, see how your competitors have approached the problem.  This can give you ideas you might not have thought of and you can incorporate these into your design.  It is a safe bet they are going to do the same when your site is up and running. This does not mean copying, and also, don’t automatically assume that their approach is working well for them.

Feature a Blog and Use it

Blogs are not only great for your visitors to get further information about the item/service or product they are looking for, but if you can do it professionally they are great for many forms of online marketing including search engine optimisation.  Ensure your development team is onboard and includes a blog in your design.

Identify your Unique Selling Points

If you are going to sell online, you need to work out your USPs.  Why would your clients and customers buy from you over a competitor?  This is the first step in motivating your visitors to buy.  Ensure your USPs are featured prominently on your business website.

Have an Easy Navigational Structure

Your site should be easy to use and built for the visitor and the different parts of your site should be very easy to find.  It is a good idea to ask your design team to make the parts of your website you want your visitors to go to, prominent on the homepage.  For most sites this will be the product / service pages as this is where your site will do the business for your business.

Impact and Trends

Web design is in part trend driven, especially for business websites.  Fluid and or responsive web design is a must have to engage a mobile audience, but this is just one aspect of design trends.  Today, there are many sites which look the same and reveal parts of it as you scroll down.  Although this is not a bad trend to follow and is visually pleasing, sometimes an original approach can be refreshing for your visitors, and with web design team skill, make more of an impact.

Make your Products/Service Pages Landing Pages

At the end of the day, homepages are not where transactions are conducted.  These should be treated like the cover of a magazine, and tell visitors what they can find inside your site.  Landing pages however, should sell your product, service, and have a clear sales message.  They should be simple to follow, use contrasting colours for call to action buttons and forms, and you should minimise the number of links on that page.  You do not want your visitors to go wandering off.

To that end all of your online marketing for your products and services should point to your products and services pages and not the homepage.

Videos are Cool but Avoid Flash

Videos if made professionally, can and do sell products and services effectively.  That said, you should avoid using Flash.  Increasingly, it is becoming incompatible with several formats including the Android Jelly Bean operating system, and is rapidly becoming outdated.

Business websites when built well will be all things to all people and search engines.  Ensure your design is professional, branded, and ready to build trust with your target audience.

This all Makes Sense… What do I do now?

Contact us and get your business website project off the ground.  You will have a professional site, branded, and one that is ready to do business for your business.