Be it the food industry, IT industry, automobile industry or a banking industry. Whether you run a petite grocery store round the corner or have an eccentric real estate office on the 55th floor. Needless to say, a web presence is crucial in today’s digital age, especially for a new business. A website is the face of your business on the web, consumers directly relate a business’s website to its product or service.
As a start-up one can be easily battled over the two viable options available for setting up high performing website. There is said to be to main approaches to set up a website:
1. Set it up from scratch with the help of a web developer
2. Set up on your own using an existing Content Management System (CMS).
While setting up a website with the help of a web developer is simple; you have to convey how you wish to display your website to your developer and it will be all taken care of. On the other side while creating a website with the help of a Content Management System the responsibility doubles up.
Most start-ups prefer to go with a CMS since it take minimal time and fits in the budget. They rely on CMS platforms like; WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. Also, these platforms give templates that are user-friendly and have magazine view which makes them interactive and enables easy application of various graphical representation of business information.
It is solely your business decision to choose out of the two alternatives depending on what is more feasible for you, your time and the amount of effort you wish to give to it.
There are a few things to keep in mind while setting up a website:
1. Create an Offer:
What is it that you are offering to your visitors? Is it an e-book? Noteworthy blog posts? A free trail offer? The offer must have enough value to a visitor to merit providing their personal information in exchange for access to it. This will also support you to construct a database of visitors by providing a Call To Action (CTA).
Sometimes you may have to sweeten the deal to encourage users to complete a CTA. An interesting offer can play a crucial role in the purchase funnel of a potential lead directing them to the Attention/Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action funnel (AIDA).
2. CTA/ Landing Pages:
A Call To Action is a button or link that you place on your website to drive prospects to become leads. This can be done by redirecting them to a landing page where they can fill out a form and submit their personal information. This data can later be used for reaching out to the leads through inbound or outbound campaigns.
A CTA should be the first thing viewers must see when they visit your page. The purpose landing pages are built is to drive conversions after all. The more visually distinct it is, the more fruitful it will be to achieve marketing objectives. Bottom-line remains that a conversion path on a website that consist of a CTA and a Landing Page has to be precise and eye-catching.
CTA’s Can Be Used For:
- To generate leads
- Form submissions
- Social sharing
- Lead Nurturing
- Closing a sale
- Promote an event
To Get The Best Out Of A CTA:
- Use an action packed text using not more than five words
- Large and legible text
- Stick to first person speech
- Visually striking using vibrant colors
- Create a sense of urgency
- Minimal fields
3. Search Engine Optimization:
Your target audience has to find your site for it to be effective, this is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into picture. SEO is more than a simple technique to increase traffic and sell more products or services online. Most often people mistake an SEO to have its importance limited to blogs and other similar content, but website SEO’s are equally important.
Although SEO is a wide concept it can be understood with a breakdown by Moz
Website’s Performance: So you have built a fabulous high performing website, but what now? How will you know if your website is doing justice to your business or not? Is it performing as you contemplated or is it under-performing? All the answers to my pounding questions lie in these magic tools.
Follow the wise words of Peter Drucker, Management Consultant,
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
There are of course many more tools available, but the most convenient and reliable ones are:
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Google Webmaster:
What Google says is; “You want to be found on web? We want to help you”. And so it does, Google webmaster is a free web service that allows webmaster to check indexing status and optimize visibility of websites.
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Google Analytics:
Google analytics, as the name suggests is a report card of your website in simple words. It tracks and reports the detailed website traffic. From pages to blogs to demography to social traffic it covers all.
In conclusion, I would like to add an interesting quote that has stayed with me and is apt to summarize the above post.
Good Art Inspires; Good design motivates– Otl Aiche
