Websites are a company's digital store front. Today's customer now has more access than ever to research products and services, as well as compare pricing and specifications. While customers may visit social media pages for dynamic, current content, it's the static content, business legitimacy, and commerce functionality that will draw them to and keep them visiting the different pages of a website.
User experience (UX) is critical to the success of a business website, especially one where commerce transactions occur. A strong UX can help increase page views, lengthen page visits, and ultimately, successfully generate the desired conversion or completion of a company's call-to-action. By customising a user experience for the specific buyer who visits your website, the greater chance for conversion or capturing of information for a later or repeat sell.
Being able to find a website easily is key to having a successful business website. Ninety-five percent of web searchers never click beyond the first page of search engine results, so it's important to use business keywords native to your industry and incorporate search engine optimisation techniques so your website ranks higher than your competitors.
Since your digital store front will likely need to be updated from time to time, it's important to have a user-friendly CMS that can be updated easily and quickly. Another advantage to having a CMS is the ability to track content, website design, and development changes. Sometimes businesses need to roll back to previous website versions, or depending on industry, prove business compliance with industry financial regulations. Content management systems are great for keeping your website current and pushing out agile, fresh changes.
It's hard work, repetitive work to create good SEO content, a customisable user experience, and find the right content management system that best fits your business needs, but if you don't track any of your site visits or user habits for how they got to your site and then navigated it, you're missing out on a huge opportunity to learn how to tweak and improve your business website. Google Analytics is a free service from Google and can provide key insights as to what content your customers like the most, like the least, and what referral sources they are coming from. For example, if the bulk of your visitors are coming from your email marketing efforts, you may want to create unique campaigns that boost even more click-through to your site.
Email is still a viable and commerce-generating marketing tool that can help drive traffic to your website. Campaigns are effective in driving traffic to your website, whether that be advertising a sale or promoting a new product. Capturing new email subscribers can help convert new customers or gain repeat sales from existing ones.
There are many moving parts and behind-the-scene functions to creating and maintaining an effective business website. Meta description; H1, H2, H3 tags; canonicalisation; User Personas and Journeys; Continuous Improvements; and more. If you start with these top five recommendations, you will be on your way to a successful website.