Setting up a website is usually one of the first tasks you complete when starting your business. At the end of the day, a website is your digital shop front and the face of your business online, so you need to be represented. Unfortunately, many websites quickly become forgotten about and the information on there soon becomes outdated and irrelevant. This can also have a negative effect on your SEO and by not updating your website regularly search engines such as Google will not crawl your content which could cause it to appear lower in the rankings than you’d like.
Why does your business need a website?
As we’ve mentioned, you can think of it as your digital shop front. Your website t invites the customers in to look around, first impressions will be formed by reading its content and seeing its design. Having a website helps to build the customers’ trust and confidence in your business, if they were to do a search for you online and find nothing about you or your business they may start to question if you really exist and they could end up choosing to go elsewhere.
Your website is your voice, use it! It’s your space to control what content you put about your business online. It needs to be constantly evolving, utilise it to show the world who you are and what you do.
Your website should include your business name, logos, contact information, social media details, who you are and what you do. Be obvious and clear about what your business does, you do not want your visitor to land on your website but lose interest as they can not find the information they were seeking.
You should aim to have at least 300 words on each page to enable enough content to be crawled by the search engines. Keywords are great but you do not want to overwhelm the content reader, so weave them into easy to read paragraphs.
Also think about where the logos, links and buttons are on each page and ensure there is consistency across the entire website to make it easier for the user to navigate.
Who is your website for?
Funnily enough it isn’t for you!
It’s for anyone who wants to look you up online, to find out more about your business and what you do. This could be a combination of current clients, collaborations, future business, connections, so you need to make sure you’re clear on ‘who’ each page of your website is for to help them find the information they need.
The Purpose of your Website
The main purpose of your website is decided by the type of business you have as each business is different. It’s great to have a website with relevant information but you need to make sure it has a purpose for the user to go there, so think about what are you’re encouraging them to do. Do you want them to…
- buy from you
- contact you
- learn more about you
- to find your location
- do you want them to sign up for anything
- read valued information and learn more from a blog, podcast or something similar
- donate to something
You’ll find that you have an overall purpose for your website, but each page might have a unique purpose of its own. Think about the journey the user will take when they land on your website and where you want them to end up. Here are a few questions to ask yourself to help:
- Which page will they land on?
- What are they searching for?
- Why are they there?
- Where do you want them to end up?
- What’s your end goal?
Make sure you do not lead users to a dead end either, keep them interested and moving through the website to find the information they need and they’ll keep returning to work with you time and time again.
Still not sure about your website purpose or what you’re missing from your site? Why don’t we arrange a session together and I can help you put together your purpose package and we can discuss any questions you have regarding your website marketing. Simply get in touch to book your session.
