Is website design a ‘one time exercise’ for your business? Designing a website is only the first part, in maintaining the most important piece of your digital marketing strategy. Many business owners believe that launching a website that looks good, should be enough to start to generate leads, sales and draw traffic from potential customers. I met with a medium sized business owner, who was frustrated by the lack of traffic her website was receiving. She had paid a lot of money to another provider, to build a fantastic website, but she was disappointed that it was not ranking with major search engines.
A review of her site, revealed a low score on global traffic, but most importantly, her domestic score (in the United States) was non-existent. In the consultation call, we reviewed her website data with her on screen share, so that she could view the information, and deepen her understanding of generating site traffic.
So What’s Wrong With My Current Website?
A consultation and website design review of the business owner’s digital collateral revealed that she did not have a site design issue (her website was eye catching, fast and navigated well for UX). What it demonstrated was a problem that many successful small and medium sized business owners faced; a lack of consistent content strategy and implementation:
• The client was only active on one social media channel, which had not been updated since 2015.
• The client could not recall if she (or her website designer) had spent any time doing regional keyword research, to help position her service and rank in local search.
• Despite having a large client list, there was no email marketing program or monthly newsletter/correspondence in place.
• The client had no active sales and few CTA’s on the website.
• No active pay-per-click, incentives, events or promotions were updated on the site.
• The business owner had not submitted her website to local business directories.
• The owner had not implemented an online review program (Google Reviews).
• The owner had not claimed her Google My Business account, or set it up to be geo-registered as a local service provider.
Your business website, whether targeting consumers or business to business clients, should be a constant ‘work in progress’. Whether you have launched a new website, or if you have an older one that has not been updated, it’s important to revisit your landing pages frequently, and retool the content. Conducting a keyword research exercise with a digital marketing professional, can help reposition your website for the traffic you want to attract, by creative website design elements that feed your sales and lead generation funnels.
The business owner I assisted this week, was not unique in her problem. An established service business for over twenty years, there was a time when your website could be a static information repository. Something that would simply work, because it was out there for customers to find. Today, we know that there are 150+ million registered domains and websites, in the United States alone. If you want your website to perform, and optimize the potential it must inform customers, and convert a visit into a consultation, or purchase decision, you must be prepared as a business owner to constantly tweak, update and refresh your website.
Consider it a living ecosystem, and an exercise in creativity; try new keywords, images, and increase blog content published on your website. Run promotions through social media that drive traffic and engagement (customer interaction) to your website. Essential content management strategies and changes (with the assistance of a content professional) can provide dramatic changes to search, using organic strategies only. Once the content fixes are in place, integrated promotional campaigns utilizing website content, consultation (sales) funnels, social media and email marketing, will help her to re-engage her existing clients, and recruit new ones.
If Your Website Isn’t HTTPS You’re In Some Trouble
The solution is a solid digital marketing and content strategy, that provides consistent outreach to find, recruit (and retain) new customers to your business. Sometimes there are not hours in the day, to dedicate to marketing your small or medium sized business and give it the attention it deserves. Fortunately, it’s easier now than ever before, to find an affordable service provider, and outsource content marketing essentials. As your business grows, so too should your website evolve constantly, to be an effective customer recruitment tool. And recent Google updates have made it necessary for many businesses who do not have websites in the https:// format to update (or lose customers, as Google warns them that your site is not safe to view or conduct financial transactions on). We’ll write more about that in our next post.
