Beyond Your Website

After acquiring a website, many small business owners have the same question, now what? Some believe that their website is the perfect brochure for all their potential customers. "If you build it, they will come", becomes their mantra because they poured a lot of resources into their website. Websites are important for housing all information about your business. Maybe you have an e-commerce site and people make purchases or get quotes. However, the real question should be "how do I get people to go to my website?"

Back to Basics You wouldn't just buy a store and wait for people to walk in and buy your product. On the internet, setting up a website with no external channels to access it, is like setting up shop in the desert. A brick and mortar store needs advertisements, posters, and word-of-mouth to see foot traffic. The same applies to your website, social platforms and paid search get your website on a customer's radar. Many businesses agonize over things on their website like the about us page, the team page or the home page. Research tells us that these pages are not typically accessed by your prospects or existing customers. Agonizing over every small detail of your store before opening up for business will cause you to lose business. Your website should be presentable, informative, and easy to navigate but spending too much time on making it perfect could take away from business's marketing efforts.

Being Realistic

In the customer's journey online they very rarely type in a URL for a business and go straight to the home page. How would they have heard about this business? Did they see an ad? People need to become aware of a business before they can consider it. The realm social media has made this process exceptionally tricky. You must put yourself in your customers' shoes and determine who they are, what their pain points might be and where they might go to solve their problems. Ideally, you want them to come to you but you can't get ahead of yourself. Brand consideration happens on places like Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest. You're job as a business owner is to determine where they might go and how you will reach them. These platforms are the primary way to lead prospects to your website.

Conclusion

A website isn't enough to exist online. You may build it but the only way they'll come is with right amount of online marketing and social media management. Don't ignore the other platforms where your business can shine. Always be ready to experiment with different platforms and ideas to give your business the boost it needs to draw customers to your site.