When designing a site you have to make sure that the brand and image is reflected in all areas of the business. Your website should have the same themes, feel, messages, logo and colour scheme and your physical shop, business cards, stationary…work van ..if you have one! Does your brand stand out and will it be recognisable?
Navigation
How easy is your site to navigate? Has all the relevant information been made available in the correct places?
What, Where, When, Why, How
From the moment a vistior opens your site, they should know the what, where, when, why and how’s of your business. The landing page should give a summary of what services/ products/ information is being offered through text and images. The information should then be explained further on the relevant pages and your site should invite visitors to contact you- email, phone, address (if necessary)
SEO
On site optimisation- Ranking higher on search engines. You should consider your position on search engines to be just as important, if not MORE important, than having a shop on the high street. An investment in SEO will always show a return.
Smart Phones and Tablets
As technology moves forward, so must you. Your website needs to be functional on both smart phones and tablets- especially as sites are being viewed more and more frequently on them. This means No Flash! In fact No Flash should also be considered for speed and SEO too.
Speed
80% of visitors leave a site if it doesn’t load within five seconds. This is the equivalent of a customer walking into your shop and straight back out! Your site has to load fast and not make browsing frustrating. Patience is a virtue, but not many of us have it.
Social Marketing
Blogs, Facebook, Twitter!
Blogs- allow you to make frequent updates to your site, invites traffic (both are good for SEO) and keeps your target audience informed.
Facebook – Your fans, customers and potential customers won’t always visit your site but, they will be on Facebook several times a day. Any news, offers, updates and interesting info can be posted on Facebook to inform and will encourage visitors to check the site.
Twitter- Being a non-Twitter user is a bit like being a non- smoker! You miss out on all the banter. It a way to keep in touch with colleagues, suppliers and (potential) customers in a less formal way. Sharing images and short messages with familiars and strangers helps get the message across and builds relationships.
Instagram and Pinterest have rapidly become popular over the past months and are more relevant for visual based businesses.
Making the most of social marketing allows you to reach a much wider audience by giving you a greater web presence, shows you are up to date and current and like most points made here …. Is good for …SEO!
Oldies that think social marketing is for youngsters WILL get left behind. If there is a new competition ground, you MUST compete.
These tips are brief, I don’t want to give too much away.
For more info or to ask aymore questions about websites and SEO please contact us on info@nottinghill.co
Kimia