What does your website do for your business?

Most companies have a website these days, but many are not fully exploiting the full benefits that a carefully planned and researched website can bring to a business.

In our day to day conversations, we continually come across the same familiar answers to logical questions when carrying out fact finding exercises with clients.

"We have a website because everyone else has one, so we thought we had better have one too..."

"We don't update our website often, we just don't have the time..."

"Blogging? No.. that's not for us, we just don't have time or available staff for things like that..."

"We're not technical people, we don't really understand the internet, it's not for us..."

These are common answers/objections we hear from clients during fact finding meetings and demonstrates just how many businesses just don't see the real value that a well built and managed website can bring to the table.

With the internet now an established and proven business tool, many companies still don't regard it as an additional "channel' in their sales operations. In particular, long established "old school" companies are taking longer to see the internet as a viable tool for selling a service, product or as a sales lead generation tool.

Blogging has become a proven way of improving search engine rankings and increasing traffic to websites, but for companies that claim "not to have time", there are options.

The addition of news content as part of a structured search marketing campaign can provide regular, unique well written content to a website, created by experienced journalists, giving your website more credibility, and raising the websites profile through regular new content that search engines will recognise and rank your website accordingly. This is of course just one of many steps that can increase your websites exposure.

When evaluating your current website, considering a new website build, or refreshing an existing website, ask yourself the following questions:

• Who is my target market?
• What do I want them to do when they arrive on my website?
• What is my unique selling point?
• Why should they visit my website rather than those of my competitors?
• Does my website speak to my target market in plain English, or is there too much jargon?

One of the most common mistakes a business can make when planning a website is to plan the content from an internal perspective. A better approach is to switch perspective and put yourself in the position of a potential prospect and consider what they be looking for, rather than what you think you can tell them.

It's also important to examine the impact that generating business from the internet can have on your company. eCommerce is a perfect example of this.

A company might consider selling it's product online for the first time, however there are several key considerations:

• Do you have the infrastructure to handle increased sales of your products? I.e. staff to monitor and process orders, storage capacity for stock, buying power for increased stock levels.
• How will you deal with returned items?
• Have you checked your legal compliance? I.e. distance selling regulations.
• Do you have an established merchant account for online card transactions?

Finally, never under estimate the power and value of effective search engine marketing and search engine optimisation. If you are building a new website or updating an existing one, you absolutely must include budget for marketing your website. You wouldn't open a shop on a street where nobody walks, so why would you do the same for your website?

In conclusion, it's important to take a step back to evaluate the who, what, when, where, & why, and not to mention the 4P's:

• Product - Do you have a product people want to buy?
• Promotion - Find a marketing solution that realistically fits your budget.
• Price - Your price must be realistic enough to cover costs and generate profit, yet must remain attractive to your potential customers
• Place - Your business must be located in a location appropriate to your target market

USP offers a full web consultancy, talk to us about your objectives, call 02392 123382, or submit an online enquiry.