Having a website is a fundamental part of having a business in today’s digital-facing market. However, simply having a website up and running is no guarantee that you are going to reap potential rewards. Having a successful business website takes more than simply putting your products or services online. To ensure that you are getting a real benefit from your website (i.e. it is helping you to meet your business goals), your site needs to have been designed to meet your business’ needs. Having a successful business website isn’t a vastly complicated task, it just takes a little time and a lot of know-how.
Define Your Goals
In order for any website to be successful it must have both a clearly defined purpose and a set of goals. Goals are the metrics of success, without which it is impossible to know if you have achieved what you intended. Alongside general goals such as “let’s boost sales” or “increase brand awareness”, you should have some strong key performance indicators (or KPIs). These will provide a base to measure progress and provide actionable insights when your goals are met or not met.
A Creative Marketing Strategy
To get top results from your e-commerce business, your website should have an effective marketing strategy. According to Magecloud.agency, your marketing strategy should be designed from a thorough understanding of your place in the market and your business requirements. In other words, you need to work bottom-up and know your customer. Your market-informed creative marketing strategy should then underline every aspect of your website design.
For example, it is important to have a clear creative marketing strategy before creating the look of your website. The look of your site, the design, images, graphics and colour palette should be a representation of your brand identity. They should be clearly identifiable and correspond coherently to your social media posting style. The look of your website should also be designed to appeal to your target market.
Optimized for Search Engine Ranking
What is the purpose of your business website? Your answer is likely to include increasing sales in some respect. What is the most effective way of doing this organically? A lot of research seems to suggest that it is boosting your search engine rankings.
There are many ways to optimize a site for SEO, such as:
- Decrease page loading speeds
- Optimize for mobile
- Optimize for search engine crawlers
- Set up correct page titles, product descriptions and meta tags
- Partner with other websites for bank-linking purposes
A Clear Call to Action
A successful business website is one that not only brings traffic to the business but generates profit from this increased traffic. In order to do this, a website needs a clear call to action. With clear calls to actions you can start to form your conversion funnel, directing users through your site to guide them along their purchasing process.
It doesn’t matter what you are trying to achieve and what your goals are, it is important to grab the attention of your visitors and make sure that any possible distractions that could keep them from moving down the funnel are eliminated. You should also try not to confuse customers – just show them what they need to do. Tell them to “click here”, tell them to “shop now” – guide them clearly to the next stage of the funnel.