You are interested in doing business with a local company. So you check out their website. This company’s website design was clearly a creation from the late 1990’s, looks amateurish and is so generic you can’t tell what services the company actually provides or if the owner is in China.
Game over.
It is a very sad fact that you are better off not having a website than having a bad one. Your company’s website is your front line and should demonstrate your company’s level of sophistication.
Get right to the point. Visitors to your website should quickly understand who you are and what makes you different from the competition.
Provide a compelling introduction on the home page, outlining what you do and your firm’s core values. Then develop throughout the site snapshots of your company’s primary competencies and descriptions of the people behind the company.
If permissible in your industry, make your website a research tool with case studies or portfolio pieces. For example, a company that designs and constructs luxury homes can legitimize claims of being an imaginative and quality builder with a portfolio of completed homes right on its website. A consulting firm that provides crisis management can demonstrate its experience by providing anonymous client case studies detailing how it helped a client manage internal and external communications during a crisis.
You probably want to avoid hiring a non-professional to do your website design. Many companies in the region have horror stories of websites that never got finished or that can’t be updated since the cousin’s boyfriend who was hired skipped town. Your company website is simply too important to play games.
Since your website is often the first impression on a new customer, count on a quality web developer to leverage tools like flash animation and design with rich images that create a visual medley to accompany the words that describe your company.
Finally, give visitors to your site reasons to come back.
Write a blog with useful tips and advice and post regularly on your site. Write news releases of company news and happenings and create a link to those stories on your home page. If you are in a retail-oriented business, post specials or offers on an ongoing basis and update those offers frequently.
Don’t get caught having a website that hinders your growth. Make your website an asset.
