We want to share with you some ways in which you can start to make your website work for your business.
1. Professional design and easy navigation
Many businesses don't have a shopfront so the first time someone comes into contact with your business will be online.
It's important that your website looks professional and reflects your brand. It is useful to think about who you are trying to target, will they be more likely to engage with you if they see a professional website.
Also it's important that the website is easy to navigate around. If they can't find what they want quickly the user will move onto the next website. If you want to sell directly from your website make sure it is clear how the user places the order and pays. The easier you make the experience for the user the more likely they are to come back.
2. Rich content that adds value
- Having good quality content that engages is critical. Think about the user intent when writing the content. What will they be searching for online?
- Having the keywords on each page increases the chances of your website being found when a user is searching on Google. Many businesses invest in search engine optimisation (SEO) for their websites, this often focuses on creating good quality backlinks.
- Now the view is that by adding fresh and relevant content on the website you will increase its performance on search engines. Remember that Google ranks individual pages and not websites as a whole so making each page relevant to the user is essential.
3. Engaging more effectively
There are a number of ways in which you can make your website more engaging.
- Having a social media feed on the website is a good start. Obviously it is important to also be active on social media. For example if you only tweet every few months this will be very obvious on your website.
- You can also add videos to illustrate how you work and to showcase your products. Adding regular tips or tutorials onto your website is a great way of encouraging users to keep coming back to access useful information.
- Finally having a regular blog is an excellent way of showing that you are an expert at what you do and sharing useful information. You can also encourage interaction by allowing readers to add comments after your blogs.
4. Continuously monitoring traffic
Once your website is up and running you should set up a way of monitoring traffic to your website. Google Analytics is a free resource which is extremely useful. You can track new visitors and those that return to your website. You can even monitor which pages they view and the average time on each page. Another useful statistic to monitor is bounce rate, this is the percentage of visits in which users view only a single page of your site. If you have a high bounce rate on a particular page it is worth reviewing the content to make it more engaging.
We hope you find these tips useful and you can apply some to make your website work more effectively for you. Are there any tips you can share with us that have made a difference to your website?