Photo by Le Buzz from Unsplash
Today, every business has a website, or they definitely should. Magazine ads and business cards still have influence when it comes to business advertising, but your website could have the potential to reach hundreds or thousands of people. There are a lot of different ways to go about setting up your business’s website. You could hire a professional company to do it for you or make one yourself. Whatever you decide to do, there are a few things you need to make sure you do for your website.
- Double-Check the Content
One of the quickest ways to lose your website’s visitors’ interest is through badly written content and typos. I know that when I visit a site and see a big fat typo on the home page, I immediately click off and look for a new site/business to help me. Basic issues like typos and confusing content can destroy potential client’s trust in your professionalism and quality of service. Always double-check the content on your site before hitting publish. Even better, have someone else check your content for you. Someone who is less familiar with your business, or the content you are writing, might be able to spot mistakes you glanced over because of your familiarity with the content.
- Contact Us
What good is your site if it doesn’t give potential clients a way to contact you? Businesses that have a physical location that clients frequently visit should list their business address in the footer of their website. It would be even better to link that address to a Google map of directions to that address. Another thing to include in the footer is your phone number or link to a contact form. Some businesses choose to not list a phone number so they can avoid spammy or uncommitted phone calls. However, it’s important to at least have a contact form somewhere on your site.
- Straight-Forward Navigation
The navigation menu might not be the main attraction of your website, but pretty much every visitor to your site will be using it. Having a straight-forward and sensible navigation menu can help your website be more user-friendly. If you have a lot of subpages, you should consider using drop-downs on your navigation menu. This can help keep the main navigation menu look organized and not overly crowded, but still provide a way for site visitors to find those more specific sub-pages they need access to.
- Pay for SEO
You can have an amazing site with a beautiful aesthetic, typo-free content, and a service or product that you know people need; and still have a low ranking in the search engines. Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for getting higher rankings on search engines like Google. SEO can be harder to do on your own, so find a company that specializes in digital marketing services and pay them to do the dirty work. Set an SEO budget every month and see how much SEO work boosts your rankings after a few months.
Your website can bring in a lot of business and spare you from unnecessary phone calls if you set it up correctly. So take some extra time to double-check your content, wire-up that contact form, reorganize the navigation menu, and pay for SEO. You might be surprised to see what a big difference these small changes can do for your business.