By Jerry Mooney
The website game can be tough to play if you are a business owner with no experience of managing an online presence. In many cases, you will end up paying for a developer or designer to create your site, and then it’s a case of hoping for the best. Of course, this is going to lead to problems - but you are also unaware of how to tell when things aren’t working.
The good news is that there are some easy ways to tell if your website is failing. We’ve put together this little primer for those of you out there who need a little guidance with running a fruitful and profitable website. Let’s dive straight in.
You leave it alone
A website is a little like a garden - it needs tending to on a regular basis and if left alone will go downhill. If you think that creating a website means ‘job done,' think again. It’s just the start of the process - you then have to keep checking in, using analytics, and making sure your site is working hard for your business. If you haven’t checked your site’s performance for the past few weeks - or longer - it’s a definite red flag that it is failing.
You don’t understand the concepts of SEO, keywords, or traffic
Search engine optimization - SEO - is the process of tuning your website, so it appeals to the likes of Google and Bing. People looking for the products or services that you sell will enter search terms - or keywords - into Google. The search engines display these results - ranking them based on the quality of each site. The higher up the rankings you are, the more visitors - or traffic - you will get. Make sure you understand these basic principles of SEO and you will see a dramatic increase in your website’s performance.
You don’t do updates
As a visitor to someone else’s website, how do you feel if things look stale and old? You might spot a blog post at the top of the site dated from a few years back. Or, you might see last year’s must-have accessory taking pride of place - despite the fact no one is wearing it anymore. The point is your website needs to look fresh, current, and, most importantly, working. Not only will updating your site regularly impress more visitors, but it will also keep the search engines interested.
You aren’t making sales
A surprising number of real-world business owners create a website just because they think they have to. They fail to understand that it is an alternative income stream that can improve profit margins by some distance. If you are selling products, think about investigating eCommerce Website Solutions. A small investment in ecommerce and a regular update WooCommerce can lead to impressive results. Don’t just think about sales regarding money, either. If your business only makes sales from physical transactions, consider using the site as a lead generator.
You don’t have a strategy
Our final point is a simple one - your website needs a strategy if you want it to succeed. You have to have a vision of what your site can bring you and what you want it to achieve. Without a strategy and clear goals, your website will end up alongside the millions of irrelevant, pointless sites all over the web.
