How to market your website

Your business wedsite plays a vital role in sales

Your website is far more than an online brochure.

It should aim to:

• Educate the user about your products or services
• Answer the user’s questions
• Ensure you are seen as trustworthy
• Capture information from users, particularly if your product is expensive

A good website from a user’s perspective

You generally need to capture a user’s interest within a few seconds, otherwise they’ll hit the back button – so make those few seconds count!

The following qualities will make your site immediately appealing:

• Good, clear design – don’t confuse your user
• Easy to navigate – make it easy for your user to find what they want, have a clear navigation structure
• Avoid flash or moving images, which will eventually distract the user
• Have a great homepage clearly describing who you are and what you do so the user can have trust in you
• Have multiple web pages, ideally one set up to describe each product or service that you offer. Make it obvious to the user they have found the correct page by including plenty of headings and subheadings.
• Have multiple contact methods on a separate ‘contact us’ page. Include your phone number on every page – some clients will always prefer to talk when placing an order, so don’t risk alienating them. Make sure you include your address (which should be a business address, not a home address) as some people distrust websites without a physical address
• Tell your users why your products or services work. Don’t just tell them what you do – write the pages from their perspective. Try and avoid the word ‘I’ or ‘we’ if you can, wherever possible. This will help convince the user that your product fulfils their need
• Include a ‘meet the staff’ page if possible, complete with staff photos and short profiles. This builds trust in your company
• Update your website regularly. Consider having a news section or something similar. You need to make it ‘sticky’, which means users want to keep coming back to see what has changed
• Provide prices on every page or have a separate price-list page. Some users shop around for prices and disregard websites that do not include price

You generally need to capture a user’s interest within a few seconds, otherwise they’ll hit the back button – so make those few seconds count

Google’s perspective

It is important that Google regards your website highly, as this means you’ll be higher up in the search results. Here are some steps you can take to improve your Google ranking.

• Choose a clear domain name, ideally with no dashes or underscores.
• Make sure the page descriptions on every page are succinct and entice the user to visit your website. Often, the page description appears next to the website name in searches
• Make sure each page has a sensible name that matches the product you are offering. Don’t include the name of your company in the title – just the name of the product. An example would be Time_Management_Training. Google allows underscores to break up words
• A website that changes regularly will rapidly ascend the Google search listings. One way to do this is to ensure you buy a website that can be updated regularly through a content management system (CMS)
• Avoid flash websites as Google is unable to read them correctly

The website owner’s perspective

• Aim to catch a user’s email address. You can do this by offering a free report or something similar in exchange for their personal details. Email subscription systems to consider are Emailbrain and Constant Contact. If you don’t mind writing a series of emails to go out, you can set up an auto-responder set of emails. These will generally go out daily or weekly to those who sign up. A great example of an auto-responder is Aweber
• Make sure you install tracking on your web pages. This means you’ll be able to trace the source of your enquiries. Two great free tools are Google Analytics and Hittail

How can I set up a website cheaply?

• Engage a website designer you know personally, possibly through networking. This means you’re more likely to get a personal service. If this isn’t possible, investigate options online
• You can register names and set up web hosting online. I have multiple domains set up with Fast Hosting Direct, which charges me £25.73 per year, per domain, for a domain name, one year of hosting, and unlimited email addresses for that domain

Once your website is set up correctly, you must ensure users can find it.  There are two ways of doing this:

• Use Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). SEO will get your website found organically, which means you’ll appear in the search results without needing to pay for the privilege. The main disadvantage is that you cannot always direct users to the relevant webpage, and they may end up on your home page. If they cannot find what they want quickly, they may leave. Another disadvantage is that SEO usually takes several months to work
• Use ‘pay per click’ ( PPC) methods such as through Google AdWords. PPC will get your website found instantly by potential clients. You can direct people to the correct page for the relevant product or service, meaning they are less likely to leave for another site. A PPC Campaign starts working within 10 minutes of its inception. It can be difficult to set up at first, so you may wish to attend a PPC Course to ensure this is done correctly

Whichever method you use, it is imperative you track your results carefully. You will particularly want to track conversions, which is when a user takes a desired action while on your site, such as:

• Signs up to a newsletter
• Buys something
• Makes a ‘contact us’ request
• Downloads a PDF or similar document

You can install conversion code through Google Analytics, either yourself if technically competent or ask your website designer to help.

Measuring results

Once you’ve started attracting traffic to your website and started measuring conversions, you’ll need to evaluate the results to see if your website is performing as expected. 

Example questions might include:

• How many new enquiries have been received today from the website (make sure you ask where people heard of you)?
• How many leads have been generated through the website?
• How many sales have been generated from the website?
• What is the bounce rate for your visitors? A bounce is when someone visits your site, realises it does not answer their questions, and instantly clicks the back button. This information can be found in Google Analytics.
• How many document downloads have there been?

Once you have started measuring your results, you will soon be able to determine whether or not your website is making money and determine your return on investment.

Look for your ideal website for sale on BusinessesForSale.com

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