As a business you may have some great Social Media profiles
and an abundance of marketing skills, but where are you directing these people
to? It is so easy to build a website these days BUT it is not easy to build a
great website.
In today’s digital age your website is your modern-shop
window, it is the channel through which the majority of your customers will
contact you and view your products and services. Even existing customers who are loyal
and long-standing customers, will look at your website occasionally. However if
it looks bad or is hard to find you will be wasting money and a lot of time.
Imagine if you wish you were the owner/builder of a 5 star
luxurious hotel, your entire business relies upon a simple factor: the number
of people who come and stay in your hotel and the recommendations you get off
the back of these.
Would you then build this fantastic five star hotel in the
middle of a street full of closed down shops where no one was visiting?
The answer I would imagine, is no!
Equally if your hotel was on the other end of the scale a 1
star budget hoteI I doubt you’d shout to the rooftops about it and position it
in the heart of Mayfair or Park Lane.
We are using metaphors about SEO and web marketing of
course.
If you’ve paid money for a web developer to make you a
really funky looking, engaging, functional website you’d want that to be seen!
You’d want it to have the options and the ability to share content, optimise
specific landing pages, create your own content – because after all, who knows
your business better than you?
All of these things are important when considering your
website development.
The free website builder sites such as (Wix, Moonfruit) are
to websites what fast food restaurants are to fine catering! They might look ok
from the outside but you’re just not getting the same thing inside. Remember
quality is so much better than quantity or a freebie.
Put simply your website needs to be searchable,
discover-able, usable and editable.
I mentioned at the start that your website is your shop
window and imagine it on a virtual high street with a million other websites on
it. About a tenth of these have the look and traffic which is your big national
advertisers like BMW & Coca Cola who have unlimited budgets. But the rest?
Well these will vary between looking very outdated and tired, to looking better
than they actually are. Those are the sites you are competing with. You need to
stand out from the crowd and it isn’t just about making your website look great
(It helps), but you to make sure people know it exists in the first place!
That is the challenge, and that is where social media, SEO
and online marketing come into their own…
Paul
Paul Waller
Digital Media Director, U2View Media Limited
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