“I have a website, why am I not getting more business?”
February 17th, 2008 by Kelly BryantIt is amazing how many people who have websites for their business ask this question. They do not understand why they are not seeing a drastic change in their business just by putting themselves on the web. They think, “Billy from We are Web Designs said all I needed to do was get my business on the web and I would see results”. Well in this day and age it’s just about having presence on the web, there are many other factors.
Let’s start with design, when was your site developed? How is the user interface? (by user interface I mean how easy it is to navigate through the site and find what you are looking for) Would you say that it has a modern look or can you tell what year it was made. You should be asking yourself these questions all the time. With the age of the internet you have to be constantly be upgrading your look. I am not saying that you need to redo your website every year but you need to change with the tides. Think about your favorite websites, is your site up to par with their design? Not only are you up to par with design but is it easy to get the information you are providing? Are you sending a clear message?
I have been reading lots of marketing books lately and they are all saying the same thing. Consumers have changed the way they buy things. Push marketing is no longer effective, we cannot tell our customers to buy our product because they need it, we need to use the pull method. The pull method is to draw the customer in with information, and lots of it. Think about yourself as a consumer for a second, when you decide to buy something now, like a digital camera, do you just go to your local electronics store and buy the first one on sale or do you research all of the latest trends and then you research who has the best deal, not just in town, but on the web. Well this is what everyone is doing. Consumers want to look for the information on what they are buying and they want to be able to get the information at any time. So what should your site do? It should draw people in with readily available and easily accessible information. When they go to your site they should be able to find what they are looking for in two clicks of a mouse. If the information is further than that they will move onto the next site. Same thing goes for look and feel of your site. If they do not like the way it looks than they will also move onto the next one. Isn’t it amazing how many things you have to think of when developing you website (this is why there are professionals, this is what they know so you don’t have to!)
The last thing that has impact on people coming to your site is finding you on the web. This subject could take pages and pages to talk about, but I will be brief. People need to be able to get to your site easily and fast. Here are some things to think about: what kind of domain name do I have? Is it long, or confusing? Is it hard to spell? What do I talk about on my homepage? Do I have any content on my homepage? Have you searched for yourself through a search engine like google or yahoo? What page were you on? These are just a few of the things to think about.
People do not realize all the different things that account for their ranking on a search engine. This type of marketing is called SEO, or search engine optimization, and the whole point of SEO is to get your site on the first page of the search, because as we all know, no one really moves on to the second page. We are talking prime real estate here people!
Since SEO is such an extensive subject and even I am yet to have a full grip on it, I will wait to expand until next time.
