A website is a portal into your business / project / blog, a little piece of the internet saying “Here I am”. Anyone can have a website, it does not have to be anything big, bold, graphical or filled with content but should always provide an introduction, what goals you have and a way to get in touch.
If you are selling a product or products on social media, have a Facebook group or business or make Instagram reels, you can always link these to a website but the most important part here is making sure you are discoverable.
It is highly frustrating to search for a company only to find they have multiple business listings on multiple sites but have no real business information, any LinkedIn data is empty and Facebook or any other well known social media outlets contain no results or empty placeholders.
The following information will help whether you choose to run a website or not as being discoverable will provide you with a much higher chance of success.
Introduction’s
An introduction could be about you or your business but the most important part of this is to get who you are across to your website visitors.
Someone reading about where you grew up and how many animals you have might be great for a personal website or blog but for a business, most people will want to know what the business does.
I have no idea what business management might entail, go into it more!
You sell this amazing product and it’s on sale, great, but how do I buy it?
You help people, in what ways?
Whenever you are introducing something, there are always questions. What I mean to say is, introduce your website, make sure you get the message across. somewhere.
If I am looking at a businesses website (not e-commerce) and I have an interest in the business for some purpose, I will check the about us page and the contact us page. Why? I want to know if they are able to answer my question and I want to know how I can communicate with them or whether they are local.
Goals
This might seem obvious but not stating what you do mean’s visitors to your website may also NOT know what you do. Provide some idea as to what you actually do.
A recruitment agency? You find candidates for roles in “such and such” categories
A used car sales company? Should be obvious really but you might want to be specific, high end pre 1980’s Rolls Royce’s for example
A hotel? You sell rooms for the night BUT do you mention that you cater for weddings and events, have live music every Friday or Elton John pop’s in for a drink from time to time?
Setting your goals should be carefully decided, especially if your business is similar to others. If you don’t mention the thing you want people to know, how will they know?
Getting in touch
This is one of the most important pieces on EVERY WEBSITE EVER.
If people can’t contact you via an easy method, do you expect them to find a way elsewhere? Almost all business websites have a contact number at the top or bottom, occasionally an email address is displayed too. It’s strongly recommended that to avoid large quantities of spam email, you do not post an email address in plain text on a website.
Information that is looked for by your website visitors when it comes to getting in touch include
- the business address
- a contact number
- opening times
- a form to communicate
- some form of social media link
This does not mean use all contact types you can possibly think of, the more you provide, the happier the visitor but if the majority of people you have already communicated with prefer to talk on the phone, make sure it’s on there!