Those of us who run our own businesses are constantly thinking of ways of improving business. This generally means getting more customers and getting more custom from existing customers. Nowadays, one key way of doing this is by making full use of your business's website but so few businesses put much thought into it.
It looks good and you have put down the things you want your customers to know and then you leave it for maybe a few weeks but in many cases for several years.
So the time to update your business website is right now. In order to help you, here are three ideas (actually, it is one great idea with three applications) that will help you get started today.
When I ask customers this question the most common answer I hear is "everybody". If you design your website and its content in this way then it is doomed to failure.
To illustrate this, think about the business you are running now. What is your business? Chances are, you sell a range of products or services that are somehow connected. Starting a business that will do anything or sell anything for anybody would be plain silly. In order to distinguish yourself from the competition you need a unique selling point and the only way to have this is for your product(s) and/or service(s) to be specialised.
So if you do this for your business in general, why would you want your website to be all things to all men?
So go back to the original idea and decide exactly who you have in mind. Split pages to suit different categories of people within that definition. For example, have pages that cater for existing customers and other web pages that cater for new customers.
Once you know who your target audience is, your content will flow from this idea in a way that is useful for your intended audience.
So you want your website to appear on page one of Google. For what keywords (or key phrases) do you want to appear on page 1? Your may easily come up with 20 or 30 phrases which you feel are all important. But to do so would be unwise. In order to optimise your website for so many different phrases, you would be watering down the strength of the phrases for which you optimise.
Think of one overall important phrase followed by one or two others and optimise for them. Ask your customers what they would search for on Google to find our which are the most important.
Remember, it is better to be on page one for one phrase than be on page 33 for 20 phrases!
Priorities are difficult things to set, especially when you are in business for yourself. I used to have a customer who would give me several jobs to do for him. I would then ask which was the most important. "They all are" he would reply. I would then say "fine, I understand but as I can only do one job at a time, which one should I start first?". Unsurprisingly he would reply "I want them all done now".
His reaction although understandable was not pragmatic. And so it is for your website. You may want to show twenty banners on your website's home page proclaiming all the marvelous things your business has to offer. However, shouting out twenty things at the same time means that your customers will hear none of your messages.
So prioritise your messages. That way, the most important messages will be heard. Remember, it is better that they hear one important message than to turn away from you because you are bombarding them with 20 messages.