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Most small businesses are learning the value of an effective online marketing campaign and have been scrambling to develop an effective website that reflects that. Businesses everywhere understand the power and importance of an effective website. Whether you can afford a full-fledged website or basic directory listings and a Facebook page, when it comes to marketing online, you’re at the mercy of potential customers and their ability to find you online. Contrary to popular belief, creating an effective website is more than just making a website that looks good; there are many factors that make an effective website. It requires strategy, analysis, continued maintenance, and constantly monitoring your Key Performance Indicators. Furthermore, you must create a flowing user experience, maintain consistent branding, create a network around your website, and developing landing pages that garner leads and conversions.
Let’s Look At 3 Ways To Make An Effective Small Business Website
What is Measured Will Improve, Use Insight To Measure Results
Once you set up Google Analytics and webmaster tools, you start to generate data about your website traffic. The buyer’s journey is defined as the process in which they navigate your website before a conversion occurs. A conversion is when visitors take the desired action on your website, which is something you must monitor and consider for your marketing strategy. Analyze your web traffic and identify the path users most frequently take when visiting your website using 960 Design’s website analysis reports.
When evaluating reports, you will begin to understand the unconventional process visitors take to arrive at the point of conversion. You begin to understand the process of potential customers, which allows you to understand your potential customers and their mindset. You can start to ask yourself questions like “Is the content on this page helpful?” and “Does it help potential customers find answers?” which are great questions and help you understand the fundamental aspects of the process. Build a website around these questions and help them to make an informative decision about working with your business.
During the first visit to your page, your visitor forms an impression of your business within 5 seconds and they decide whether your business is worth pursuing or whether they should navigate elsewhere. There should be strong attention given to your homepage or landing page – which is the page people usually encounter when arriving at your website. Creating customized effective landing pages is a great way to make a great first impression and using reporting features you can see the effectiveness of these pages and decide whether you should continue pursuing these options.
Encourage Conversions
Once you are acquiring appropriate data about your website it’s time to start analyzing your Key-Performance Indicators (KPIs) on your web pages to determine if there are additional elements that can be improved.
Analyze your homepage or landing page and consider it’s bounce rate, defined as the percentage of people that stick around and view other pages on your website or leave the page without viewing any other pages. Consider if there are any opportunities to get your potential customer’s attention like an enticing call-to-action which promotes movement on the ideal conversion path. Create a beautiful well-thought-out user experience that shows your visitors where to go, what to do, and how to do it.
Create benchmarks for different KPI’s and identify areas to improve. This is a great way to isolate Key-Performance Indicators (KPIs) and adjust your marketing efforts to at all of the minute details around your project. Look at each page and find out why users are leaving – these are a few questions to ask yourself in this situation:
- Is your website easy to navigate? How is the navigation bar?
- Are your forms asking for too much information?
- Is there a clear call-to-action on your page that asks the users to take the next step or is it cluttered?
- Are there multiple call-to-action elements? This can be confusing to visitors.
Once you have improved certain elements of your marketing metrics, remember that the work will never be “done.” Digital marketing strategies like SEO, SEM, Social Media, PPC Advertising, and email marketing can create inbound traffic to your site which you can measure and with the right strategy improve. Also, don’t be discouraged if you don’t see results right away, many amateur web designers will promise immediate results, but the truth is many of these endeavors take months and even years to fully take effect (be wary of any web designers that tell promise immediate results).
Keep Your Website Updated
One of the things most small businesses have learned in the last couple of years is the importance of website updates and maintenance. Keeping your website up-to-date allows your customers to believe in the integrity of your marketing and your ability to provide them with a complete service or product. Nothing is more unprofessional than having a website that is out of date. It shows little concern and carelessness on the part of the business owner about their appearance.
As a small business owner, your time is valuable. It is possible to build an efficient strategy to the mundane task of updating a website. Create a marketing calendar and identify key moments for your business to update it’s website. Planning ahead will allow you orchestrate the changes in a way that allows you more control over time management and meeting deadlines. Create reminders about seasonal updates and key moments to make your changes more efficient.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
