First impressions count and today it’s likely that the first impression of your business will come from your website.  So what does your website say about you?  Is it permanently ‘under construction’?  Was it last updated in 1998?  Or is it an effective and measurable marketing tool?

To begin with, your website must say who you are, what you do and why you are different than or better than your competitors.  Deciding on a structure for your website doesn’t need to be daunting.  Go back to the basics and decide what the purpose of your site is.  Is it to close a sale and deliver a purchase or is it to inform and interest the reader enough to contact you?  If your website doesn’t provide the delivery mechanism for your products, then don’t try to jam it full of every single reason to buy from your business.  Instead, decide on key groups of customers and focus on the issues and challenges that cause them to look for a business like yours.  Next, pick out your unique selling points that show why you are different than your competitors.  If you say that you do the same things as the rest of your industry, people will have nothing to compare you with except your price.

Whilst these marketing concepts are universal and can be applied to any advertising media, websites carry some unique capabilities that not everyone uses to their fullest potential.  Make sure that your website:

• Is technically well designed to enable a better ranking in search engine results (e.g. Google).
• Is easy for you to update regularly.  Search engines love regularly changing, relevant content so you want the ability to be able to add and change your text without it being a lengthy chore.
• Captures visitor’s contact details and demographics.  This is most effectively done by offering valuable information for free in return for an email address and answers to profiling questions (age, gender, business size & type etc).  Remember, you know more than your customers about your product or service so you probably have the contents of a ‘free report’ in your head.
• Tracks statistics such as referring pages, which of your pages are the most popular and which pages your customers last read before they leave.  This detailed information will enable you to see the impact of any changes that you make to your site’s contents or structure.

Talk to your local Computer Troubleshooters about how to turn your website into a valuable marketing resource.