Having a great website is very important for every business. In today’s marketing strategies, building a website that creates a perception is vital. Online presence is the way to go, studies show that 70% to 80% of customers search for companies and businesses online. How can you develop an effective business website? Let us look at the following 7 great tips:
1. Make Your Website Be Easy to Find
It is very important to build an effective domain name when developing a business website. Let the domain describe what you do or should include the company name. You are free to have multiple domain names pointing to your website as long as it is easy for consumers to find.
2. Define Your Target Audience
How do your target customers look like? Defining your audience for your business helps you define your online marketing strategies as well. It is the crucial starting point for all your digital marketing efforts. You will be able to build profiles that sell to your target audience through advertising and tailor your marketing strategies in line with each of the potential customers’ specifications.
3. There is a Need for Speed
Website ranking and website speed are important aspects of an effective website. Slow websites tend to have a negative reaction to the business from the target audience. It is therefore vital to make sure that the website runs smoothly at all times. Keep the software updated, Images and videos optimized and consider changing the web hosts to one that can handle your brand’s demands. You may opt to try the shared WordPress hosting which is fast and effective.
4. Embrace a Simple Design That Is Easy to Navigate
Keep the design as simple and straight forward as possible. Avoid fonts, animations or colours that easily distract the visitors’ concentration on your website. You can build a web design using WordPress that uses brief paragraphs and bullet points to make your webpage’s text readable. The readers should be able to easily get back to the homepage. Sometime these websites may take their visitors to other pages other than the actual webpage.
5. Make Sure Your Website is SEO-Friendly
Remember that the higher you rank on the results page, the more you generate traffic to your site. Your site would be useless if people cannot find it. The first step is to ensure that your site is SEO-friendly addressing all the onsite optimization needs. WordPress is a good platform for SEO and also improves user experience.
SEO is important for the success of your online business making customers become your brand’s repeat buyers. This is the reason you find competitive industries spend lots of money on paid website traffic. You can also promote your website through social media platforms which can be a highly effective channel to use. Expose your website to your network by sharing links and asking friends and other people to join and share widely.
6. Make the Site Mobile Friendly
Nowadays, the use of smartphones has been widely embraced and many people use their phones to access online platforms. If they cannot access your website on their cell phones, they will definitely visit your competitor who has a mobile responsive website. To be able to run a successful eCommerce website, you should cater to mobile users as well.
7. Make Your Visitors Feel Obliged to Act
You have successfully created a website that looks good, what next? You need to show your visitors what they need to do once they reach there. You should have a call to action on each page that compels the visitors to act so that you can get them subscribed to your newsletters, sign up for a free trial, added to your mailing list, etc. Your website should have a way of converting your visitors into customers and if it does not have, follow up with the email list to create conversions from the captured leads.
In Summary
Business websites serve a number of functions including to provide information, prospecting customers online, define your brand, help customers be able to contact you and above all, help a potential customer make the decision to buy from you. That is why businesses need to understand the importance of developing an effective business website and updating it more often.
About the Author
Maryn Mcdonnell is a creative content writer. She spends her days working closely with many entrepreneurs and creative thinkers internationally. Her interests include travel, self-improvement, and technology. Find Maryn on Twitter @MarynMcdonnell
Also published on Medium.
