Websites. Almost every company has one. It’s almost like having a sign on your door so people can interact with your business.
But all websites are not created equal.
Some websites help grow a business with e-commerce. Others answer the challenges of growing a business by offering digital tools or resources. Still other websites grow a business online – taking that business in a whole new direction that supports or evolves their current business model.
So, when people ask us how a good website can help your business, we have a go-to list we always recommend.
1. Good Websites Deliver Credibility
In today’s digital world, your website is most likely to be one of the first encounters someone has with your brand.
Think about whether or not your current website is the first impression you wish to make. If your site has low-quality graphics, difficult navigation, or lackluster content, it may drive away prospects rather than make meaningful connections.
That’s why it is important to have a good website for your business. For Kompani Group, the minimum viable product (MVP) that could be “good enough” means proper resolution graphics or photos, a dynamic site that properly adjusts to desktop and mobile devices, and clear, accurate content that your target audience can find easily using the site’s navigation menu.
2. Good Websites Grow Your Business with Search
Try and think of the last time you went more than 3 or 4 pages deep on a web search. Not easy to recall, is it? That’s by design.
Search engines want to give you the best-possible results based on your search phrase, and they use complex algorithms to find which ones actually answer your need and which ones simply use the same words over and over again.
To grow a business online, search is an essential component that should not be ignored.
A great deal of this is centered around content, and making sure that content is informative and accurate. But a good website doesn’t just serve as a holding tank for content, it organizes that content in a way that is engaging and memorable.
Often this means taking design into consideration so people find and follow information in ways that keep them returning to your site.
When you pair this with #1, a website can grow a business organically by establishing a sort of online reputation. Credibility + content means search engines and digital assistants will start recognizing your domain as a helpful resource, and might even start using your content to answer search questions.
In Google, this is called a featured snippet, and it appears before any of the other listed search results – that’s how a website can be used as a marketing platform, even without using any advertising, pay per click, or other traditional paid methods.
3. Good Websites Engage Web Visitors
“Engagement” is a buzzword you’ve likely heard a lot when it comes to the online and digital worlds. While there are lots of ways to measure engagement, the basic idea is that you want web visitors to actually “do” something when they come to your website.
You want them to interact or take deliberate actions. It could be something like requesting a consultation. But it could also be downloading a product guide or completing a questionnaire.
One of the unique ways in which websites increase engagement is by allowing for direct interaction with members of your team.
You may have experienced on other websites – a chat window opens and offers to help answer your questions. Whether this is serviced by a chat bot or a live person, this conversation is engagement at its best.
In today’s instant-gratification society, the ability to respond when web visitors are ready and receptive is how a good website can help your business convert guests into customers and clients.
4. Good Websites Enhance Customer Relationships
Of all the challenges of growing a business, one of the most difficult to balance is staffing and providing superior customer service.
Your website can help solve this by giving you better reach and efficiency for every employee. Customer service has the power to lose customers forever or make them loyal customers for life – and the first step is being able to reach someone for support when it’s needed.
A good website can function as a ticketing system, a digital help desk, order tracking, an account history, and more.
If your website provides essential information and resources, then it helps your customer service team spend more time with customers who need special assistance or may have more complex issues.
Meanwhile, those customers who just need quick answers find what they need without an unnecessary wait.
5. Good Websites Are Effective Sales Tools
You may be aware that your website can help grow your business through e-commerce, but really good, professional websites do a lot more than simply list products and handle online transactions.
Ideally, your website should address content for all stages of the customer sales and acquisition process.
Sometimes it’s easiest to view this journey like a funnel – the large opening at the top of the funnel is the portion of your website that addresses the large general public audience and creates awareness of your brand, products, or services.
It should explain or demonstrate what it is you do, and why customers should choose your company over others in your competitive set.
As the funnel narrows, you need content that speaks directly to people who know they need your solution and are looking for specific answers to help them finalize a decision.
This may take the form of case studies, white papers, FAQs, or interactive components that show greater detail of your offerings, including pricing or cost options. The end point of the funnel should make sure that interested customers actually follow through.
This is where good websites help convert leads into sales. It may be a sign-up for a free resource or consultation. You might want customers to order samples (so you can collect their contact info for follow up at a later date). Or, you might be ready to complete a digital sale right then and there through some e-commerce functionality.
Good websites are designed to lead audiences through that funnel in a logical way.
6. Good Websites Provide Metrics
It is important to have a good website for your business in order to collect data that helps your company make informed decisions.
Not only do you want a website to track things like number of unique visitors and page views (though these are important too), you also want to keep a close eye on metrics like bounce rates, top traffic source, exit pages, and average time on page, just to name a few.
These are key if you want to grow a business online as they literally tell you how effective your website is at attracting and/or retaining visitors.
Take bounce rate, for example. Bounce rate is when someone comes to your website, through search or other links, and then quickly leaves after realizing your site either wasn’t what they were looking for in the first place, or they’re otherwise turned off by something in the site’s design, content, or functionality.
Good websites have low bounce rates – because high bounce rates have a negative impact on SEO rankings. Exit pages help you identify where you’re losing people in the sales funnel, and let you know those sections of your website need work.
Top traffic source can tell you how effective digital or traditional ads, emails, social media, and other marketing materials are doing at routing people to your site. If your placements are working well, you should see a spike coming from the unique URL or QR code you’ve included in that piece.
There are dozens of analytics you can use to evaluate your website.
You know your site is doing well when you’re able to reach the benchmarks for performance that are applicable to your business goals.
7. Good Websites Reach Customers Where They Are
Once upon a time, everyone accessed the internet from a desktop computer.
Now, people have laptops, phones, tablets, e-readers, and even televisions that connect to the web. It’s important that your website functions well across all of those platforms, or you risk losing a significant portion of your audience.
That’s what “responsive design” is all about. It means that a person viewing your website on a mobile device doesn’t just see a tiny shrunken version of the desktop site, and vice versa. It also considers things like touch screens when it comes to how people interact with your website.
If something is too difficult or problematic to click or tap, users are not likely to fight against poor design to find what they need. They’ll simply go to another website that “works better.” If you want to grow your business online, your website needs to be useful (and usable) by as many people as possible.
Remember the sales funnel? If you lose prospects right at the top, you have no chance of leading them further through the sales process.
8. Good Websites Grow Your Business by Growing WITH Your Business
There’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all when it comes to how a website can grow your business.
That’s because no two businesses are exactly the same, nor do they have the same needs, users, resources, or budgets.
A small local business with only a couple dozen business-to-business customers and 25 products does not need a state-of-the-art e-commerce platform with all the functionality of a major e-retailer… or at least, not right away.
A good website should grow alongside your business by being easy to update and edit, and designed for scalability.
Yes, you want a website that expands on your current capabilities, but not so quickly that you exhaust operating budgets or alienate customers with an experience that makes no sense to them.
It can be exciting to see all the things that are possible with web technology, but you want to be strategic in how you incorporate the right elements into your website. Tell yourself you want to be two or three steps ahead – not light years away.
Even if you find that everything on this list applies to you, start with one or two initiatives that are the most important to your current, day-to-day needs.
If you’re not sure what those should be, then feel free to ask us and we’ll be happy to help give you advice, guidance, or a full proposal based on your specifications.
After all, we’ve been helping businesses grow online (and elsewhere) for decades. During that time, we’ve seen just how a website can grow your business for companies working in nearly every industry imaginable, and we’d be glad to help you, too.