When it comes to online marketing, one of the most invaluable tools available to you is your website. Like a brick-and-mortar store, your website gives would-be customers an idea of your business and what you have to offer. And like a physical storefront, it’s vital you present a clean, professional, and easily navigable site to impress your prospects and convert them into paying customers.
We’ve come up with a number of reasons why a website is important for business, especially small business. The trick to making a successful site is having a few crucial elements to get noticed and make visiting more visitor-friendly. Good online marketing is all about creating a positive experience for your prospects, and your site plays a major role in creating that experience. Keep these elements in mind to get the right attention from your customer base and make your site a success.
- Obtain a good domain name
One common piece of advice when starting a website is to own your own domain name. That domain name is often the entry point to your business, especially with regard to SEO. As a rule of thumb, it’s usually best to keep your domain name simple. Avoid hyphens and numbers, and keep your name simple and easy to memorize. It also helps to make your name catchy to make it easier for prospects to remember in the future. Another thing to remember is to keep the name broad to facilitate future growth.
- Invest in quality web hosting
Finding quality web hosting is one of your main priorities, right after securing a suitable domain name. Put simply, a web host is a service that hosts your site on the internet. Whenever a user accesses your domain, they are taken to the site that the domain is linked to on your hosting account. For optimal results, it’s usually best to invest in a dedicated server. A dedicated server setup may cost you extra, but it’s a standalone server with higher performance and greater security. Give some serious thought to switching to a dedicated server once your site gets more traffic and needs some more support.
- Optimize for mobile
One of the most common trends in digital marketing is optimizing for mobile. If you offer self storage in North York, there are users who are looking for the services you offer through mobile, so it pays to design your site to accommodate those users. Google also favours mobile-friendly sites, making it easier to rank higher on search results by investing in increased mobile-friendliness. Many websites opt for responsive design to accommodate mobile users, but it also pays to inspect your pages yourself. Double-check your pages to ensure they remain readable and appealing even on devices with smaller screens.
- Create a simple, but memorable design
Most successful websites feature similar design elements, namely simplicity and readability. As a rule, simple designs tend to work best. Complicated website designs are typically difficult to work with and complex to navigate. Simple designs, in contrast, look elegant and timeless and help users get around your site. Simple colours like white help your pages avoid looking busy and cluttered. Match your colour scheme with easy-to-read fonts like Arial or Verdana. These fonts work on any device, which goes hand-in-hand with mobile-friendliness.
- Produce accurate and engaging content
Content is a vital component of digital marketing. Quality content provides your audience with useful information they can use in daily life. To name a few examples, businesses like Augusta Green Sprinklers create guides on how to take care of gardening at home. Regularly making this kind of content is a great way to earn the trust and goodwill of your customer base, especially if you go into detail. Long-form content is also great for improving your search rankings. Google tends to favour sites that feature reliable information and boast higher audience engagement. Focus on long-tail content to make the most of your content marketing.
- Remember your calls to action (CTAs)
Every page on your site should entice your readers to do something. Calls to action encourage your audience to take certain actions, like contacting you, signing up for services, or helping themselves to freebies. Content is good for educating your clients, but you also want your visitors to know they can make purchases from you. Give your readers a noticeable invitation to take action, like a button, link, or clear verbiage. Take note that your call to action should match your customers’ mindset. Refrain from making your call to action too on-the-nose to maintain audience goodwill at the most critical part of their buyers’ journey.
- Check your page speeds
Keep in mind that customer satisfaction is the name of the game when it comes to online marketing. One way to create a positive experience for your visitors is to offer them fast load speeds. Users typically want their content right away, so the faster your pages load the sooner they get it. Audit your site’s performance regularly to ensure that pages load within a reasonable time. One thing you can do to stay on top of page speeds is to optimize any videos and images hosted on your pages. Poorly optimized videos and images are a common cause of slow load speeds; keep a close eye on yours to keep load times low.
- Optimize your site for search engines
Lastly, make sure you use SEO best practices. Having a memorable and useful site means nothing if you can’t rake in the customers. It’s also vital you invest in SEO to ensure you get Google’s attention. Insert your keywords into your content to make sure you can rank for those keywords and appear on relevant search results. In particular, focus on local keywords to get the attention of nearby residents who are most likely to need your services. To give yourself an additional edge, you may want to ask an SEO service. With their help, you can further improve your SEO strategy and rake in more prospects. Use your keywords with your content to get the right attention from Google. With enough effort and smart use of SEO, your pages might end up on the first page of search results and help you rake in more traffic.
Your website is an integral part of your online marketing, and it pays to give it the attention it deserves. Keep these elements in mind to improve your site and attract a wider flow of traffic for your business.