10 tips to use the web to grow your business
10 tips to use the web to grow your business
This article is based on experience of working with a variety of companies who use the Internet as a critical sales tool in their businesses. It gives 10 tips on how you can improve the performance of your website.
Tip 1 Measure success against your objectives
Firstly you need to set measurable objectives and to be as specific as possible e.g. generate x sales or newsletter subscribers per week. Having set objectives you can then start thinking about what measures you need to have in place to ensure you have met these objectives.
Tip 2 Define the role of your website
This is essential when you first commission a website, and needs revisiting with an existing site. A website can be many things – an online brochure, the tool for requesting off-line literature or requesting a sales visit. For some products and services it can complete the sale and develop an ongoing relationship (replacing the sales person) – just think of Amazon.
Tip 3 Get the design look right
When we refer to design in web terms there are two aspects we need to think about – firstly graphic design to ensure the look and feel of the site appeals to the relevant target audience. You need to use a suitable font, and colours and contrasts and ensure the site complies with the Disability Discrimination Act. By all means follow your offline brand or style guidelines but do make sure they work in the online medium.
Tip 4 Usability Design Tips
Getting the graphic design right is only part of the story. You need to ensure the site is user friendly, by having a consistent structure to present information, ensuring the navigation is intuitive and using a layered approach to information so visitors can drill down into detail only when they need to. Every page should have a strong call to action. In other words know what you want visitors to do next at each stage and make that action point obvious.
Tip 5 Keep your site up to date
Your website is a permanent advert for your business. You need to instil confidence when people are using your website and up to date information will increase your credibility with potential customers.
Tip 6 Write differently for the web
People read web pages differently than they read text on paper, they speed read text about 25% faster on screen than they do on paper. So you have much less time to grab their attention and get them interested. You need shorter sharper text and more than ever need to use headlines and highlighting which really draws out the benefits of what you have to offer.
Tip 7 Drive Traffic to your Site
In marketing terms this is simply to promote your website address everywhere including stationary, sales brochures, vans and sale boards. Use email signatures to promote your site URL and highlight new services and products. Direct mail can point visitors to a specific page on your website to view a particular product. In this way you can combine the power of a traditional marketing medium with the wonders of interactivity of the new medium.
Tip 8 Be friendly to spiders and surfers
Write your web copy for the reader – but don’t forget that there are unseen readers out there who can have a significant influence on how well your site performs on search engines.
Tip 9 Collect and interact with customers
The web is an interactive medium. You can create a dialogue with customers and prospects – through things like notice boards and discussion forum and even just straight forward email and ‘call me’ options. Through a subscription based newsletter or ‘notify me’ facility you can create a database of potential leads.
Tip 10 Understand how your target audience use your site
Use your web statistics to understand how people arrive at and travel around your site. Are your calls to action on your website working? So do they get the phone ringing or email coming in? In fact at the very basic level – is it clear what you want people to do from each page on the site?
About the Author
Hannah Reynolds is Managing Director of Mischievous Marketing, which she established Mischievous Marketing in November 2005 and the aim of the company is work with organisations to ensure their web strategy to be developed to fit alongside the organisation’s future direction. Hannah has won a number of business awards for innovation.
