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The Best Practices for Small Business Websites
| WebGuy724 is proud to present to you the latest issue of our newsletter. In this issue, we highlight Best Practices for websites that will help you and your website use the Internet to its maximum potential. |  Why do you need a good website?
In recent studies it was revealed that 70% of the United State’s population were Internet users. This is over 212 million people, and the number is consistently growing as using the Internet is ever increasingly becoming a way of life. Now more than ever, your website has a significant impact on your organization and your bottom line. This is true for an organization of any size, but especially true for small businesses and small organizations who are trying to compete against their local competition, large companies trying to increase their market capitalization by driving out the little guy, and by an increasingly competitive global market where because of the web, competition for your product or service can thrive throughout the country and the world.
Here are our three website best practices – three recommendations that if implemented properly - will help you take advantage of the opportunity that the World Wide Web has given to all organizations, and give you an edge against your competitors. | Keep your website current and relevant / regularly reviewing, analyzing, and improving it
An outdated website with stale or old information will leave a bad impression on your visitors, and likely reduce the amount of time they will stay at your site, reduce the chance that they will visit again, and increase the chance that they will visit a competitors site and become a customer there.Most web hosting accounts will give you the ability to track and review your website traffic. If it does not, then there are third party solutions (both free and at a cost) that can provide statistics and analysis if the stat tracking of your web host is non-existent or insufficient.This information can be very telling, showing not only how much visitor traffic occurs, but in depth details about those visitors such as how they found your site, what pages in your site they view, how long they stay at your site, if they come back after their first visit, etc. You can then take this information to make adjustments and improvements to your website on a regular basis. | Make a good first impression
In many cases, your website may be the first chance and only chance you have at making a good impression on a potential customer. Recent statistics show that a student looking to attend a college will visit that college’s website seven times on average before visiting or contacting that college. Your potential customers are not much different – they are checking out your competitor websites (your competition is just a simple Google search away) and evaluating these competitor websites before making a decision on where to visit or who to buy from.
Furthermore, the Internet has leveled the playing field when it comes to competing with the larger companies. You have the opportunity to project the image and professionalism of a much larger company, thereby not only competing with much larger companies, but giving you the edge against your smaller sized competition. | Provide some type of incentive for the visitor / implement some type of online marketing campaign
An effective website will direct or funnel the visitor to some type of action – purchase an item at your site, sign up for a newsletter, request more information, become a member, print a coupon, etc. A successful website is one that does more than just serves as an online business card or brochure, but provides some type of incentive that will increase the chances or converting that visitor into a customer.
There are many different methods and strategies available today that can drive traffic to your website. Certainly the pay per click advertising campaigns of many Search Engines are very popular (and by many accounts are the most effective), but there are other methods and strategies that will send web users to your site. It’s important that you define your target market and then create and implement a marketing strategy that not only reaches your target market but works in a way that sends those potential customers to your website. And most importantly for a small business/organization is to keep it cost effective and within your budget. | | Webguy724 is a dedicated website support group of Info724 Ltd |
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