I quite often hear the statement ‘I just need an online presence’ from prospects and clients. But the modern website can deliver much, much more than that without too much extra initial investment. So why limit it’s potential?
Here’s a list of additional value a properly designed and constructed website can add:
- Position you as an expert in your field
- Drive new opportunities through Google and other internet searches
- Create a platform for advertising your organisation
- Maintain regular contact with customers and prospects
- Interface to collect information from customers and prospects
- Another place to sell consumer products
- Ability to customise website content yourself
- Automate repetitive administrative tasks
Position you as an expert in your field
Writing articles for your website is a form of blogging and it can be very beneficial. It will help attract more website viewers, improving the position of your site in Google searches. It can also position you as an expert in your field, attract prospects and help turn them into customers by adding extra value to your relationship with them.
Drive new opportunities through internet searches
The more searchable content (text & images) you put on your website, the more likely people will come across your site on Google or other search engines. Increased web traffic will improve your site’s ranking when people looking for your product or service are searching, thereby providing your organisation with a highly visible, free directory listing.
Create a platform for advertising
Once your site is up and running you can use Google Adwords (and other forms of pay per click advertising) to drive targeted prospects to your website. This can be a very inexpensive way of advertising as the budget is set by you, unlike traditional advertising methods that have huge upfront, fixed costs. Pay per click advertising only appears in search results when visitors use the search words you select, providing a highly targeted, direct link to your website.
Maintain regular contact with customers
Do you have a mailing list? If not, you can use your website to collect one. Once you have a mailing list that includes the email addresses of your contacts, you can set up a periodic electronic newsletter, just like this one! See the value already? You can update your mailing list with new products or services, use case studies to explain how your products/ services help your customers and share testimonials you’ve received to improve the credibility of your organisation.
Interface to collect information from customers and prospects
Data fields can be added to a website with a content management system to collect information from website visitors. The reasons to do this are numerous but include: building a mailing list, asking visitors to register their interest in your product or service or allowing them secure access to a private area of your website. Once collected this information can help build valuable relationship between you and your customers or other stakeholders.
Another place to sell consumer products
If you already sell products in a store or similar, why not sell your products online? This can be a low cost sales growth solution, providing significant operational savings compared to selling via retail stores. You could then offer lower prices to your customers or simply cash in on higher profits.
Ability to customise, add, edit website content yourself
The modern website should have an integrated Content Management System (CMS) which enables the owner to add, edit and delete new or existing content. Without a CMS your website will become out of date very quickly and you will need to keep returning to your designer or web developer to make changes. A good CMS will allow you to add, edit or remove web pages, text and images, giving you complete control. If you want to run a new campaign, or add a new product or service you can just do it through your web browser with minimal training. You don’t need to know any HTML coding or how to use complex software like Dreamweaver.
Automate repetitive administrative tasks
Websites are great tools for undertaking repetitive or administrative tasks. Almost any task that requires the collection, storage and distribution of information to and from a database can be undertaken via a website. The solutions this can provide are in theory only limited by human imagination.
Please feel welcome to contact me with your opinion, comments or questions related to this article.
Frank Stillitano
Founder of Flux Visual Communication
