1st February, 2018
Learn how to get value out of your website in the time it takes to decide what to order from the menu.
By the time everyone’s settled into their seats and scrambled to place drink orders, we’ll get you thinking about what you want to achieve with your website and what to include to help you reach your objectives.
While you’re deciding between if you’d prefer an entrée and a main OR a main and a dessert, we’ll help you figure out the best way to measure whether your website is effective.
That’s about six minutes of reading time.
One of the first places potential customers will go to find out more about your business is your website.
Aside from being a strong representation of your brand, your website is an important communication tool that can help your business achieve different objectives.
But before you get stuck into how to build one, think about what you want your website to communicate.
The first question you should ask yourself is what you want to achieve with a website. Whether it’s getting people to know about your business or drive more sales, knowing what you’re setting out to achieve will help guide the design of your website.
If you want to help your audience get to know your business, your homepage should clearly show – and tell – what your business does.
Potential customers will get to know you through an explanation of your product and/or services, as well as familiarity with your visual style – which is where the importance of branding comes in.
Generating interest in your product or service is about getting potential customers to a place where they would consider purchasing from your business.
Typically, this involves demonstrating the benefits of your product or service. There are lots of ways you can communicate these, from visual design, to explanatory videos, to customer testimonials and reviews.
Converting the awareness and interest you generate in your brand and business into sales – and profit – is an objective that all businesses share, and a website is a good tool to help you achieve this.
This is the space to set up your eCommerce platform to sell your products, or to set up electronic forms that allow customers to book your services. Read more about using your website to boost sales here.
Once you’ve got your head around what you want your website to achieve, read more about how to build your website here.
Once you’ve established your website objectives, measuring whether or not you’re successful at achieving them becomes much easier.
Different ways to measure if you’re hitting your goals include:
1. Awareness: You can get a pretty good indication of how many people have gotten to know about your business via your website with the number of page views your website gets.
2. Interest: Assessing people’s level of interest in your business can be a little trickier to find out. A combination of the time people spend looking at your website, as well as your bounce rate (that is, the number of people who left your website after viewing only one page), can give you an indication of how interested they are.
Generally, the longer people spend on your website, and the lower the bounce rate, the more interest people have in your business.
Also, if you use a video to explain the benefits of your product or service, checking out how many people have watched your video, as well as the number of people who have watched your video until the very end, can give some insight to how interesting your business is to potential customers.
3. Conversion: How successful your website is at generating sales is pretty easy to wrap your head around. This is the percentage of visitors to your website who have made a purchase or a booking through your website.
When it comes to building a good website, there are three important elements to consider.
Read more about how to improve your business’ website here.
Top 3 takeaways
1. Before building a website for business, think about what you want it to achieve. This goal will influence how you design your website.
2. Three marketing objectives that websites can help businesses achieve are awareness, interest and conversion.
3. When building your website, be sure to consider UX, branding and eCommerce capabilities.
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