We all know that a website is a necessity for nearly every business that is more than just a shop. Well, even shops can have a website and use it to make their business even more accessible, but we will be addressing slightly bigger businesses at least in this post.
What used to be a luxury about a decade ago, a website, is a must have now. Nearly every potential customer is connected online and it’s very likely that your competitors are reaching out to them through their websites. You can’t be left behind, so start planning for one if you don’t already have it. BEWARE, even if you have a website, it is very likely not made the way it should be. So, it will not serve the purpose you expect it to serve. This post will give you the most important tips to make or revamp your website. It isn’t about the technical stuff, some of which you can find in posts like this.
Table of Contents
Tip 1: A Website is NOT a Brochure
Most small and medium businesses treat their websites as a digital brochure. That’s because a brochure is often the most common marketing tool used by businesses. When it is online, you don’t even have to spend on printing it! How cool is that! Well, not really.
A digital brochure works for a few businesses where you really need to share a whole catalogue of goods or services to your potential customers. Such businesses are usually niche, with very few competitors, and buyers spread over a large area (few states, at least). For example, a business that sells medical and scientific models. Since the number of buyers are few, such businesses usually work long distances. Vendors are very few (outside Ambala). If your business is similar, then a brochure or catalogue website may be somewhat useful. At least it will give you more business than its own cost of making and maintaining. But is that enough?
With so many people online, there are also many, many sellers online. A brochure website, which is passive marketing, becomes lost among the many. It doesn’t bring in any new business, so the business owner loses trust in the medium. Huge opportunity lost just because there was no vision about what the website should achieve. A brochure website is one with no vision, passive, dependent on customers to find them somehow. Customers these days have so many options that they don’t even engage with such websites.
Then how should the website be? The following tips will give you the answer.
Tip 2: A Business Website Works When it Engages
Watch this video, which is just one of many on YouTube.
What is common between most of these street food vendors? That difference because of which they were featured in the video. It is their engagement with customers with their performance. The performance does nothing to improve the quality or taste of their food. Customers flock to them just because others talk about them. If first-time buyers like the performance, they will surely return. They will also be eager to share with others that they have eaten at this popular stall.
No, you don’t have to perform! The takeaway from the video above is not that every business owner needs to be entertaining to make their business successful. The takeaway is the business needs to engage with customers, develop trust, give them reasons to return, and give them reasons to recommend. The right website strategy will do just that for you.
How will it do so? The following tips will tell you how. For now, just keep in mind that a ‘make once and forget’ website cannot do all this.
Tip 3: A Business Website Can Only Do its Work When it is Visible
Most small business websites are visited either accidentally or when a savvy customer has a business card of the business. That is highly limited, especially considering that any website can be visited by billions of people in every corner of the world, every second! Sites don’t get visitors because they are not visible. Just being available is not the same as being visible.
In a shopping mall, the showrooms have better visibility on the ground floor, near the entrance, near places of high footfall (movie hall), and when they are big. All such showrooms attract a premium price or rent.
On the internet, location is the same for all!
You don’t have to pay a premium for the location, but then neither do others. The mall entrance is equally distant for all. There is no high footfall area. Then how do we become visible in this crowd? Imagine standing in the center of a circular atrium with thousands of shops around you. All the same distance. How will you choose where to shop? Will your decision be helped by the following?
- Familiarity of the brand
- How the frontage looks
- How big the shop is
How about these additional reasons?
- Somebody had recommended
- You have a mall catalogue in your hand that has the shop on its cover
- There’s a standee near you, or a banner hanging from the ceiling
- You subscribed to a free mailer from a shop and they send useful information regularly
- You are a part of an active community promoted or supported by the brand
All the points above have an equivalent for any website. The first set is about how you make your website., leaving the brand familiarity. How your website looks, how big it feels, is all in your hands. making a website feel good doesn’t cost even a fraction of the cost of a big showroom or shop.
The second set is what the next two tips will cover.
Tip 4: A Successful Business Website Actively Reaches Out
Just like free mailers in your mailbox, people will opt (subscribe) to similar e-mailers that you offer to send. As long as the emailers are not too frequent and don’t hard-sell. Selling once a while is fine. Annual offers, festive offers are appreciated. Weekly sale is not really a sale.
Other ways to actively reach out may be different for each industry and niche. Look for online equivalent for all offline options of marketing and reach-out. Let us also clarify that marketing and selling are not the same thing. Marketing is all that you do you make a customer interested in your offerings. Sales is when you ask for the buying action. Building familiarity, trust, aspiration, and branding is all marketing.
Let us also clarify that branding does not mean just the brand name. Branding is what the brand name means to the customer. Luxury, quality, value for money, good service, trustworthy, easy to find and buy, unique, etc. etc. What does your brand name mean to the customer? How will you enhance your branding online? Remember, you have the opportunity to create a big brand value by the active outreach, even while being a small business. On the other hand, a big business will look small if they don’t do the right things with their website.
Tip 5: A Business Website Engages When it is Useful Even When Not Selling
This tip is an extension of the previous one but had to be stated separately. People want to know about their buying decisions, and they appreciate someone who helps them know. Those who help know also develop trust. The trust is not only that the helping one is a good person but also that they know. This knowledge is the most important aspect of developing a relation for the long run.
On the internet, where there are many wanting to sell, the ones that succeed are the ones that aren’t really selling. They build relations and trust. We hope you found this post useful and that this will be a start of our long relation. We know that it’s a slow process to build these relations, but then success is never in an instant and doesn’t come easy.
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