Business Websites don't just provide an online presence, like an employee they work hard for you and should produce a return on your investment - but that might not always be a financial one.
When you're just starting out, trying to understand the difference between a website and a business website can be hard to wrap your head around, because it's hard to imagine what you don't know!
We've all experienced other people's websites and we clicked away from each site and learnt lessons from them.
The obvious ones are things like:
- Z Did we like how it looked?
- Z Was it easy to use?
- Z Did we get what we expected out of it?
Whilst we've probably all left websites with these exact thoughts, not everyone builds their own website with considerations like these of the audience in mind.
A really good starting point is to put yourself in your audience's shoes and consider if you were them, what would you want out of this website?
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Be warned, a lot of people get wrapped up in look and feel - and yes, whilst that is a factor, a more important one is to ensure the audience got what they came for.
Better still if your business can also get what you want out of the audience - but in truth that should be secondary. Interestingly, this might not just be "orders" or "leads". Please keep in mind not every visitor is going to jump straight in and do what you want them to do, so allowing them to do other things beyond straight up buying is a really good strategy.
An adjustment of mindset to consider what else they might want to do if they're not ready to buy yet can let you find ways to help a big chunk of your audience that you may be missing. Helping these people first will ensure your site is useful to your audience and be more likely to generate results.
It's true to say that a number of people visiting your site will simply be checking you out after hearing about you previously - and there absolutely your site needs to both look great and show off relevant business information.
For every project we've ever built we've always found another potential audience that wanted to do something else beyond the obvious. Sometimes it can be hard to imagine what a website can do for your business when you don't know what's possible - but have a start by thinking about any tasks you manually do with leads, customers, suppliers and partners and whether automating those tasks via your website would help you or your customers, and ask if that help done for you would have a value.
If you're looking for specific examples of things your website can do for you - have a click round this site, particularly in the More Leads, More Sales and More Time sections to see if you find inspiration there. And if you're still struggling, please consider getting an agency like us to help you!
