A business website is a very important part of going online for any business. Your website should be the HQ of your online presence. It is on your website that you tell the world what you do and how they can access your products and services. To do this you must put a lot of thought on the content on your website and make sure it delivers on its purpose.
A website is not a fast food
A website is not something you get off the shelf like fast food. Sure you can design a website in minutes or maybe days, but a website is not just design.
You may have heard the expression content is king. Well if you haven’t; note it down, because you will be hearing a lot more about it as you try to leverage opportunities on the internet for your business.
You need to take more time to think about the content on your website. The text, images, and videos on your website should all be targeted at promoting your business.
So, while you can design a great looking website in days (or even minutes) it will take a lot more than that to research, analyse, organise and present your content.
Your website should show the world what your business is all about. This information should be presented in the language that web users understand.
When hiring a web designer, you should have an idea of the content you want to be on your website. Discuss this with the web designer and get his/her opinion.
Do not rush through designing a website for your business. Being online is not a sprint, it is indeed a marathon. Even if you can design your website in 2 minutes it amounts to nothing if it delivers no sales in a year.
Centre on your Products & Services
Your website should focus on promoting your products and services and not just general information about your business.
Most businesses new to websites, centre there website on their business name (brand name), but this is not effective except you are a popular brand.
Of course, you should have pages on your website that does not directly promote your products and services like the about page that summarises your business and a contact page that tells customers how to reach you, but most of your website should be about your products and services.
Assuming the name of your business is Okeke & Sons Ltd and you market generators. Your website should focus on your generator marketing business and not on Okeke & Sons.
This is because a lot more internet users are more likely looking for generator related services than Okeke & Sons. Let’s face it, who cares about Okeke & Sons? But, we all care about power generators, thanks to PHCN.
Focusing your business around your brand name means you will be limiting yourself to customers who already know your brand name.
If you are a small business, this number is not going to be impressive. However, if your brand is MTN or Nokia a combination of brand name and products and services could be beneficial.
The focus of your website is important because unlike what most businesses new to websites think most of your visitors come through search engines than through your direct URL.
Search engine uses the focus of a site to decide what search results your WebPages appear on. So, building your business website around your brand (eg Okeke & Sons), will limit your online market to people who already know about your business, limiting the online growth potential of your business.
Note that by product and services, I do not mean product or service brand names. Now assuming Okeke & Sons markets ChinChen generators, their website content should focus on power generators and ChinChen generators and not ChinChen.
They can even start a blog about generators providing tips about ChinChen generators and generators in general. This way they can build their brand around the generator industry and make their website one of the top destinations for anything generator.
Keyword Research is Important
We have established that your website should have good content and that most content should focus on promoting your products and services.
However, this content should be based on research of search behaviour and not anything you like. Keyword research will guide you on developing content that can easily be found by web users.
Keywords are words people use when they search for information on search engines. Keyword research will enable you discover these words so that you can include them in your web copies.
Research the words people use when searching for your products and services and include such words in your web copies.
You can use tools like Google Adwords Keyword research tool and Google Insights to research keywords and search trends. You can also hire an SEO expert to help you with keyword research and other search engine optimisation services.
