Not about money, not about pretty pictures, not even about the techy stuff. These 5 tips are about strategy for your business website.
1. I.D. Your Target Audience And Your Goals
Who already wants to buy your service or product? What is attractive about your service or product? These are just two questions to ask when identifying your target audience. Make sure you know who is interested in your product and incorporate that thinking into your website redesign.
Goals for your website must be much more than straight sales and flat exchanges of money. It is critical that your website allows for ways to attract more visitors and leads – which equals more customers. It is critical that your website helps you facilitate relationships.
2. Invest In Impressive/High-Quality Content
Often, a lot of the time, and frequently (yes, that redundancy was on purpose), the success of your website depends on this one very important investment; content is king and you should be aware that it can produce many royalties. Invest wisely in written and image content that sets you apart from your competitors and is distinctively attractive to your target audience. If you have identified your niche, this content will increase your revenue. Plain and simple.
The fancy design or flashy appearance (don’t use flash, please – it smothers your SEO), is not the only factor that makes your website successful. Professional appearance is critical, absolutely, but don’t get wrapped up in a Hollywood website on a shoestring budget. Great looking, professional websites are within your reach, affordably. Go with a clean look, simple functionality and then spend heavier on remarkable content.
Fresh content is a must. This means your business blogging needs your disciplined attention; write regularly and include this in your long-term strategy.
The bottom line in the value of high-quality written content is Search Engine Optimization. SEO must be included in your plan for website redesign. Read more about free SEO tactics in our article here: No Investment Needed: Basic Search Engine Optimization.
3. Avoid Losing Current Assets
If you are re-designing your website, that naturally means there is an existing one in place. Be sure to identify the assets of that website – write them down and have them incorporated into the redesigned site. This includes articles, pages, links and other content that has proven to bring you success.
4. Invite, Invite, Invite (formerly known as Sell, Sell, Sell)
This one is hard to talk about – sales – without sounding crass; we all know crass commercialism turns us off and that our customers already expect it from salespeople.
Think, “Invite,” rather than, “Sell.” Think, “Attract,” rather than, “Push.”
If you, your service or your product are attractive to your target audience, you’ve got a large portion of the battle already won. And if you, your service or your product requires that you push it upon people and spend endless hours conjuring clever promotions, you may want to re-think what you are selling. Attraction, rather than promotion, is the surest and most successful approach.
Giving your customers the opportunity for a quality “get” in conjunction with supplying you with their contact information is a win-win. The quality of that “get,” of that offer or freebie or whatever the customer gets to put in their pocket and walk away with, is reputation and trust-building in a strong way. Do this well, and they will remember you. And they’ll keep coming back.
Use landing pages, email sign-up boxes and forms, surveys, give-aways and contests to engage, invite and impress. Plan this into your website redesign, without fail.
5. Measure Your Target Audience And Your Goals
Two words here: Google Analytics. To not incorporate Google Analytics (GA) is to throw away opportunities to see who your website visitors are, where they come from and what parts of your website they like the best. While that’s an over-simplification of just a sliver of what GA can do for your business, it still sounds juicy, doesn’t it?
A vital tool to help make your business successful is what you have in your hand – make sure your other hand connects with a professional website resource that partners with your goals.
To learn how SafeHouse Web can analyze your website needs and show you how to use your tool to invite more business, contact us anytime!
