These days you can’t have a business without a website, right?
Well, although this is true most of the time, having a website is not necessarily the first or most essential element for marketing your business. The first objective of a business is to make money, and if your website cannot help you make that money, then it need not be a priority.
When you decide to get a website you need to understand how the site can be put to work to help you achieve your first objective – making money. This is where it becomes important to think about what to put on your website.
Too many small businesses still make the mistake of thinking that it’s fine to just adapt the content from their business profile and put that on the website. Then they end up with the equivalent of an online brochure which sits static and undiscovered in the deep depths of the Internet. What a waste of their hard earned money!
The priorities for a working website – one that is an effective marketing tool – are:
- To be found and well ranked by search engines
- To grab the attention of visitors to the site
- To convert those visitors into leads
Because leads can become sales, and sales make money.
So never get a website done without first planning how to get these three elements right. It means that you need to integrate the functionality of your website into both your marketing and sales strategy. If you feel a bit out of your depth here, select a web designer and a content writer who can advise you before they develop the site for you.
To find out more, read our reality checklist for a basic working website here.
