Last updated on September 5th, 2010 at 06:07 pm
Building a website, and keeping it up to date, that has a professional look and works well can help your company generate interest in its products and services and hopefully, either directly or indirectly, increase sales. On the other hand, a poorly designed website can harm your business by putting people off by presenting a bad impression of the business before they ever get a chance to talk to you.
Before you start developing the online part of your business, you should consider the following common misconceptions:-
1. Building a website will not automatically draw in customers – the so called “if you build it they will come” idea. The problem here is cost – advertising on search engines like Google can get expensive if you are paying for every visitor. You need to find more economical ways to draw people to your site probably on a local level but this could be on a national or even international level. Options include off-line advertising, business cards, email marketing (but be careful to avoid spam mail) and even affiliate marketing where you pay people either for a lead or commission on sales.
2. Try to keep your product range simple. Unless you are a Tescos’, Sainburys or one of the other big stores do not try to sell everything to everybody. The presentation of a specific line of products that is targeted to a particular market segment will help you distinguish your company from your competitors and draw in interested customers. Become a specialist in your market, someone that people know understands the product or service very well and you can compete with the bigger players.
3. Be different, imitating the competition will not help your business and if you imitate them too much may cause your problems. When you copy what others are doing, you will not stand out to your potential customers but will just be seen as one among many others. You need to present yourself in a unique way and blaze your own trail through innovative presentations and the overall look of your website. Having said this do not go too far from “the norm” in your chosen market segment.
4. Your home page should not overwhelm visitors with content. You have a very short amount of time (about 12 seconds) to grab the attention of your visitors or they will go elsewhere. Layout your home page attractively and explain just enough about your business that makes the visitor want to look at other pages of your site. Remember though that not all visitors will see your home page, if your site is attractive to the search engines people may arrive at the site on any page.
5. Websites full of gimmicks are counterproductive. These may look great but they often load slowly. You may think that it looks cool to have images that flash on your site but often this turns people off, in the same way that music that automatically plays when a web-page is loaded can be a turn off if your visitor is working in an open plan office.
6. Despite what you may read, building a good website is not easy. There are many factors involved which you will not be aware of until you are well into the process. Whether or not you can do it yourself depends on the type of site you want and your own experience and skills. For instance, you will need to become proficient in HTML, CSS and demonstrate an artistic sense. You may also need to understand databases, PHP or ASP and Javascript for advanced websites. Hiring a web designer that specialises in business websites might be your best move.
7. A website that has no real focus or purpose has little value for a business. You might be tempted to get one going “just because everyone has one”, but you should work out what the purpose of your website is, do you want it to :-
8. You should be prepared to keep your website up to date and add content on a regular basis. For example, if your business is a shop and your website advertises your products do you have opening hours on the website – if so do they change at bank-holidays etc. You may run a bed-and-breakfast and need to update room availability, or you may run a bigger business and need to update product ranges. Think about having a news section on the website that will allow you to update news (new contracts, new staff etc) but if you do this make sure that it is updated regularly, there is nothing worse than seeing a news page that was last updated 18 months ago.