So you've spent months and probably more money than you would have liked to, bringing your new website to life.
So now all you have to do is to sit back and wait the phone calls to come rolling on it - right? Sadly, no.
In many ways the hard work has only just begun. Unless you've got someone else who is responsible for carrying out website management activities, you'll have to devote some time to your new site.
Before you start - it's not about you
One fundamental thing to understand, is that for someone to come and visit your website, they need to have a reason. So you need to understand what needs and motivations your audience have, in order to meet them (and therefore, get paid!).
This should have been incorporated into the design, but if not, you may be able to improve the content over time to better meet their needs. Even if they want an electrician right away, they will still need something from you before they decide to give you a call. This will be information - where are you, what services you offer. But you also have to persuade them to ring you and not your competitors.
If you haven't sat down and thought about how to meet your audience's need to find you, find out about you, find out if you can help them, find out if they want you to help them and finally decide if they want to get in touch - then do it now. It will make the next steps a lot easier.
Ok now - where to start
Here's some things you can do straight away:
- Make sure the website address is on business cards, email signatures, pens and t-shirts.
- Tell everyone on your contact list about the new site.
- Whoever is going to do updates should get familiar with the content management system.
- Similarly, familiarity with Google Analytics or whatever reporting system the site has will allow you to gain more insight into what your website visitors are doing once numbers build.
Your first priority will likely be - building up visitor numbers
For most new websites, time has been put into the content and structure during the design process, so building visitor numbers - i.e. promoting the site (and therefore your business), will be the priority first up.
If you do nothing at all, the visitors to your website will likely be people who already know you looking for your phone number.
Ways to get more people to visit your website:
- If you haven't already done it, think about creating some content so that you can say to people "Visit our website to view xyz" or "download abc". Use something on your site - a free tool, an eBook or a particularly in-depth blog article, to give people a reason to go to the site. Tell everyone about it at any networking or communication opportunity. Of course, if you haven't got anything like this - now is the time to get it written.
- You can use paid methods of generating traffic, such as Google Adwords, radio advertising or similar. With paid advertising you generally will need something to promote like a sale, a new product or other offering. You can use it to drum up business without one, but I've only seen it work well for consumer services like plumbers and products like furniture, travel etc.
- Think about creating a brochure to promote your business and do a mail-drop in selected areas - again, you will need something to promote or something to say to people. Since brochures have limited space, give people a little bit of information and provide the rest on the website.
- Search Engine Optimisation is a way of attracting people to your site by making sure your site come up in search results. This is by no means a simple task, especially if you have any competition at all. SEO is a marathon, not a sprint and we have several posts about it on this site. If you haven't started, now is the time.
- List in all the online directories you can find – eg NZS.com, Finda, Yellow Pages etc. While from a backlink and referral source these online directories aren't going to add tremendous value, it's worth doing anyway.
- Create new content - if it wasn't part of your site design planning, come up with a list of new content to add to your site. This can include:
- News - including industry news and news about your business.
- Blogs - a great way to add content that is easy to generate.
- FAQs.
- Completed projects.
- Case studies.
- Customers testimonials.
- How to guides.
And to help out, here's 15 ideas for website content
Of course the end game is not just to have lots of people visiting your site, the goal is to get some of these people interested in what you have to offer. So there is no use attracting people from India for your local lawn-mowing business. It has to be 'good' traffic.
Once you've got these things under control - time to get social
You can set up a Facebook page and/or Twitter account for your business during your website project, but if not - do it now.
But - and it's a big but - if your business does not have the resources to be actively social, or if you don't have a plan for how to do it - you're almost better off not start until you do. If you think it is important, here are some articles that may be of help:
- What does social sharing mean for small business.
- 12 of the biggest, most used social networks and platforms.
- Ten myths of social media marketing.
And then, it's back to the site to improve it's performance
Once you are starting to get a steady flow of visitors, the next step is usually to look at what those visitors are doing and work out if you can get more of them to do the things you want them to.
This can include:
- Visit a certain page - preferably your main offer.
- Fill out a form.
- Download an eBook.
- Watch a video.
- Buy something.
- Contact you.
If you haven't already, set up goals in Google Analytics to measure interactions or whatever activity is an indicator of success on the site.
- Look at the pages on your site that have high bounce rates or low interaction - what can you do to make it more appealing? The article Using AIDA to improve website conversion rates might help.
- Are there any search phrases that are bringing visitors to the site but aren't all that well served once they get there - do you need to create a page or more content for them?
- Where are your visitors coming from, and is this the right geo located audience for you.
- Are you getting visitors but no nibbles - if yes, maybe your site is turning them off rather than on:
It's never to late to...
If you didn't do it as part of the planning phase of your website design project:
- Prepare a content calendar or schedule for items to be created and published over time. Tips and advice, news, product reviews - that type of thing works well.
- Refine your keyword phrases. Google Webmaster Tools now provides you a list of the phrases that are bringing visitors to your site.
- Check out your competition for ideas on what more you could do. Don't just look local - look at national and international organisations who are in the same business.
So with all this work to do, there is no time like the present. Pick one thing and start from there.
We know it's a lot, that's why we offer website management for businesses.
