In today digital age it is given that every business needs to have a web presence in order to reach their potential target market! However, [bctt tweet=”having a web presence is only the START of your business’ online journey!”]
Having assisted hundreds of small to medium businesses develop websites that convinces and converts site visitors into potential leads, what I explain to business owners is that if they are serious about generating leads, they need to have lot more than a great looking web presence.
The fact is that a business’ responsive website needs to take an outstanding START and keep on improvising as per today’s evolving customer needs and technological upgrades.
Using my usual acronym style, let’s take a look at what START means for your responsive website and how it will help you with your company’s desired outcome.
Strategic Goals
A common problem that I come across with most websites is the lack of a clear strategic outcome! [bctt tweet=”Every website must have goals in-line with their business plan.”] Most websites have one or a combination of the following strategic goals.
- Establish a strong brand identity within your target market
- Generate leads from search or referrals
- Sell a product/service (i.e. for an ecommerce website)
Michael Jones, owner of a business insolvency firm in Sydney explains how having a clear website strategy helped them get meaningful results for their online business!
“Previously our website lacked direction. A detailed website audit helped raise the red flags and the areas that needed to be fixed. A poor website strategy topped the list.
Being in the highly sensitive bankruptcy business, our goal was to establish a credible online identity that people can trust and rely on. Defining our goal helped us develop a clear website strategy!
From that point forward everything from website layout, call to action, content placement, images, videos and blogs, was geared towards achieving that goal and getting the most ROI from our online marketing efforts.”
Tasks that Matters!
Having their website up and running with a well-defined strategy, business owners asks: Are we ready to make a bang online?
In reality, there are a number of things that a business needs to set up correctly to make sure their website gets the kind of traffic they are after and get the desired outcome online! You can use website grader or similar software to check how your website is performing with respect to the following tasks.
1. Test your website browser and mobile compatibility
2. Make sure it is optimised to be found by search engines.
3. Set up profiles on relevant social media channels and link them to your website.
4. Set up a mechanism to capture the basic information about your target market.
5. [bctt tweet=”Make sure your website is secure for users to browse and share personal details.”] You can achieve this by having an independently authenticated HTTPS website.
Activity Analysis
“You need to alter what you do and how you do it so that 1,000 true fans is sufficient to make you very happy.” – Seth Godin
Now that you are done with the post website set up tasks, it’s time to turn attention to the traffic. Notice that [bctt tweet=”website traffic does not mean mere numbers, it’s the quality of this traffic that matters.”]
- User location
- Your best and worst performing pages
- Content that gets most clicks
- What people are searching for on the site
- How long are they spending time on your website
- Determine if you need a mobile website
All these analytics can help you refine your Online Marketing Strategy even better.
Referral Marketing
[bctt tweet=”People tend to respond better to information coming from trusted and credible names than owned media outlets”] such as company website. In this regard, according to a latest poll by Tomoson, [bctt tweet=”referral marketing or influencer marketing has become the most effective online customer acquisition method”] leaving behind email, organic search, paid search, display advertising, affiliate marketing and other ways to promote online businesses.
For a small to medium business, any person, group or another well-known brand can play the role of an influencer, based upon their knowledge, reputation or experience with the brand. SMEs need to understand the power of social media to help their prospective customers find useful information and recommendations in order to market their product and services indirectly to ad-weary customers.
Timing
Timing is yet another important consideration when it comes to measuring how well your website is performing against your pre-defined online marketing goals.
The concept of timing can be analysed in a number of contexts. Slow-loading websites turn off your visitors instantly and the chances of them bouncing to your competitor’s site increases. You can check your website loading speed here
Dwell time, on the other hand, determines how much time users are spending on your website. The more time they spend, the more pages they are likely to visit and get to know your business better. Dwell time depends upon how engaging and easily navigational your website content is.
Timing can also be analysed in the context of campaigns run on your website. Slight change in web design to reflect important events and time sensitive special offers can be huge conversion boosters for your website. Take a look at how a plumbing business owner improved his sales with this simple trick.
Conclusion
Just like the title says, getting a responsive website presence is only the START, there are a lot more considerations for SME owners who want their business to flourish online and squash competition with a goal focused high performing website.
Grab my presentation on SlideShare:
Are you not satisfied with how your website is performing today? Do you want to take your responsive website to the next level so it not only promotes your business online but also converts your site visitors into returning loyal customers?
We can help! At solomoIT, we are a team of Digital Marketing experts and can assist you in setting up your website strategy and making sure every aspect of your web presence is spot-on to meet your desired business goals. We are actively involved in promoting SME business owners seeking to outsource web development and online marketing services. We have helped a number of small and medium businesses in Australia from industries as diverse as finance and real estate to food and tradie businesses, in developing a strong digital presence and generate more leads online.