|
A good website is an important business consideration these days. It helps customers to find you and buy your wares as well as explaining more about your company and brand values. What are the key elements you need to consider?
Buying a domain
If you're outsourcing the design work for a new website, this company will be able to find and purchase a domain for you. This is the web address of your site - e.g. www.a1builders.co.uk. It is easy to see if the address you want is available and buy it online through a UK domain name company - just Google 'domain' and you will find many listed.
Shop window to your business
Once you own a website domain, you need to think about the first page of your website or home page. In many ways this is the most important part of your site because it's most likely to be what customers will see first. Plus, it's the page that search engines such as Google and Yahoo will often display if people are searching for your site, or sites like yours.
It is therefore essential to give as clear a representation of your business as possible on the home page of the website - think of it as a shop window onto your business.
Nowadays, many people use a broadband connection to the Internet, so the use of large images is not as much of an issue as it used to be. However, you may still want to ensure that your website can be viewed by the majority of browsers (such as Internet Explorer and Firefox), and also think about visitors who are using much smaller screens - on mobile phones or ipods for example. This means that you might choose to reduce the number of large images, animation and sound, or perhaps offer a text-only version of the site.
Some suggestions you may want to consider for your home page are:
- Prominently representing your brand and colours
- Giving a clear and direct description of what you do
- Advertising your latest products, services or offers
- Using colour and design in attractive way
- Not being afraid to use fewer words and more space on the page
Be search engine friendly
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a term to describe how businesses can make their websites more search engine friendly - which means that visitors will find it more easily when they use a search engine.
The main things to know about SEO are:
- Search engines use the text on your homepage, particularly the first few lines, to decide how relevant your site is for particular search terms. So use words in the headline and second line that will help customers to find you.
- For example, if you have a website about your plumbing business in Brighton, think about the sort of words people might 'Google' to find your site. It's probably, 'plumber + Brighton'. So make sure those are among the first words mentioned on the homepage of your site, and on the other key site pages.
- Search engines like website content that changes frequently, so consider putting a news box or blog on the main page, or update the site with your most current offers as often as you can.
- Search engines also like web links that link to internal or external content, so try to include these in your site, particularly on the homepage and contact other sites (such as service directories) to include a link back to your website.
- Make sure your website has a 'site map'. This is a page that lists all the other pages of the website. Again, it makes it easier for customers and search engines to access all the pages of your site. Have a look at the Direct Line for Business sitemap for inspiration!
In touch
Your website should also help customers to contact you, and to buy your products and services. Many business websites still lack the tools to close a deal, and do not have clear contact details, or an indication of how to buy.
Think of all the different ways that customers contact you, and help them to reach you. This might mean including:
- Dedicated e-mail links for general enquiries or sales
- Details of your physical address
- An interactive order form
- A shopping basket
- A call back button, which enables you to call them back
- Landline and mobile phone numbers
- A link to a promotional website
- A downloadable brochure
Let me entertain you
As well as giving your customers information about you and your products, you can also use your website in a number of additional ways:
- Entertain customers with animation, short videos, games or interesting images
- Use your website as a repository of useful information
- Run marketing and promotional campaigns from your website
- Use your website as a source of company or industry news or opinion
- Use your website to build customer loyalty by creating a customer community portal
But I'm not very technical!
If you're running a very small company and don't employ anyone with web design skills, a quick web search or check in the phone book will provide contact details for plenty of companies who can quote for designing and (if required) ongoing maintenance of a website.
If your budget won't stretch to out sourcing the work, try asking friends and family if they know anyone with the relevant skills who could help out.
Related information:
IT & Ecommerce - getting the most out of technology and the Internet in your business.
IT security - how to keep electronic information safe.
Office insurance - more information on our insurance cover for office-based businesses.
Related articles:
| 
