04 Aug Building a new website? The most important thing is…
…having a great web design? NOPE.
Lots of keywords? WRONG.
Building a new website is a large investment in both time and money. It is easy to get carried away and swing for the fences by paying the biggest marketing agency in town to do their thing.
It can also be a daunting experience and cause you to put the project to the side and just get any old site up online so you have a ‘digital footprint’.
Either of the aforementioned approaches to web development can be doing more harm than good though. A beautifully designed site with little infrastructure may as well be a digital brochure, and putting your website in the too hard basket can cost you dearly in lost revenue.
So where does that leave us? What is the most important thing to keep in mind when investing in a new website?
The most important thing is turning traffic into dollars.
Your website is an investment, because it is there as a sales and marketing tool. Whether you sell products or services your website is there to generate income. The end result for your website is always a call to action: whether that call to action is a email subscribe, a phone call or an online purchase depends on your sales process. Just get them to a call to action.
The following things should be addressed before launching in and building your website:
- Create an online marketing plan
- Structure your content carefully
- Draw a road map
- What is the end result?
• CREATE AN ONLINE MARKETING PLAN
You need to have an online marketing plan drawn up before you begin work creating your website. The marketing plan should have answers to the following:
Who is my target audience?
Demographics, geographics and psychographics. The more you know about your target audience, the better.
What is the product or service I am selling?
This will help you define the end goal as well as tailor marketing efforts.
Why is my business better than the competition?
What is your unique selling proposition? Your website needs to shout out to the customer and give them a reason to choose you over the competition.
What is my target audience typing into Google to find products and services that I offer?
Make a list of keywords and phrases. Use the research tool in Google Adwords to do this.
• STRUCTURE YOUR CONTENT CAREFULLY
Using all of the information in your marketing plan you need to write content to fill your website.Write your content with your keyword list in mind. You needn’t go overboard by stuffing the keywords in there, but each page should centre around one or two keywords and the keyword should be in the heading and page title.
Structuring your content this way not only helps with your SEO, but down the track it will make your Google Adwords campaigns more effective.
• DRAW A ROAD MAP
With all of your content written and pages separated with headings it is now important to decide how you will link them all together on your website. How will your main pages link to your subpages, and how will each of your main pages link with each other.
Something to keep in mind here is your SEO. Google reads through the main parts of your website very quickly and if you can draw clear paths to follow then you will be ranked higher in search.
• LEAD THEM TO BUY
It is well and good to get your customer to your website through great SEO and other marketing efforts, but it will all fall apart if your online sales process isn’t strong. Have clear ‘buy points’ at the right time. We use pop ups with great success, but it is always good to include these after you’ve given the customer something -whether it be detailed information or resources.
Sometimes as customers we are on a website and are interested in buying, but the sales points aren’t clear. We look around quickly, get frustrated and then leave without buying. Your website is a shop; lead your customers around and ask for the sale!