That headline almost felt a bit silly to write. It seems obvious as to why you should build a website for your company. But in some ways, it just isn’t that simple. Asking this question can help you in your journey to build the right site for you, your customers and your clients (however that fits for you).
The base of a website, the core concept, is something that is often overlooked in lieu of “picking a good design” or “what color should my site be.” These concepts are almost too advanced in the process to start with. There are many benefits of blogging for business.
You should start by asking yourself, “why do I want to create a business website?”
Asking this question means you find answers to important checklist items which will fuel your design and colors. Are you building a website because you want to take product orders on it? Are you building a website to allow potential new clients to contact you and ask for quotes? Maybe your site will already tell people what the costs of your products and services are to cut down on time waste your customer service (or just you) endure. In this case, the website’s function is to “save time, filter customers or clients.” And that conclusion would be pretty relevant to how the site would be designed. Starting in a reverse fashion means the design and layout fuel the site’s concept, and that’s just bad.
One reason to have a website is purely for creating a professional brand extension for your business. Most people assume every business will have some sort of website presence, so you should almost always have one. Unless you are the band, Radiohead, disappearing from the web probably isn’t going to benefit you.
The function is another huge reason. Giving people the ability to contact, order, inquire, and obtain using your website allows you to grow and expand. It allows you to collect information on customers and remarket them. It allows you to filter them down to what they actually want. If you choose your site’s design first without first understanding this logic, your design will likely interrupt such flow. You want to make sure you are able to look for a design theme which supports your site’s logical narrative. Review the top business blogs sites for good ideas for your business website.
How much of your business will be driven by mobile consumers? In most cases, this number is at the minimum, 50%. Often times, it is more than 70%. That insane percentage should not be overlooked, nor should I understate it. People search for new business opportunities and new products using their mobile smartphones. Maybe you don’t like to consider that your latest customer found you while in the bathroom of an Applebee’s, but it is darn possible. So the site’s core functionality likely should be top-grade in mobile. Many companies overlook mobile’s importance.
Websites are philosophy and function more than they are colors and design. Asking yourself what you actually want to achieve from the website to start is a better starting point for the overall concept. It will help the website designer and developer, as well.
How To Make Your Business Website SEO Friendly
Everyone wants a website that is user-friendly and SEO ready, but what does SEO ready really mean? Well, the term seems big and scary, but it is really simple these days. Many years ago, that wasn’t the case: SEO was a big technical thingy that only an esoteric group of people in a dark cave really understood. But Google changed all that.
So what makes your site an SEO site? Well, the first thing you need to ask is, what terms would you want people to search and find your site? Follow this with the essential, when you look at your website, does it hold informative content regarding that aforementioned search term? If you answer yes to number 2, you are off to a grand start. The biggest mistake people make is wanting to rank for a term that isn’t supported by the content on their website. Google wants the search experience for people to be a human one when people search for ‘washer and dryer’ they should find sites which have these, review these or discuss these. That’s the human experience, the human flow. Aligning your site’s goal with Googles is the ultimate best practice.
The first one allows Google to read it. And it should have words that reflect the subject of the actual page. So if we are talking about reviewing a washing machine, then maybe, domain.com/washing-machines-best-2015/
Google can’t read a number. So when it scans the web, it will use your directory to guide it to relevant content.
Beware of “SEO Companies,” as most of them bank on you have no idea what you are talking about. The key to SEO, past a few basic changes like directories, is to produce relevant content that relates to your content. For example, have a blog like the Check Issuing blog we have! We talk about a lot of topics (some not as relevant as others) but we also talk about a lot of related content like check fraud, check disbursement and medical patient statements.
Easy enough, right?
What Website Analytics Matter To Your Small Business?
Website analytics matter. Metrics are the backbone of your business, particularly on the Web. At Check Issuing, metrics support a huge part of our business. We want to know our customers and our customer’s business. Knowing metrics means more insight and the ability to apply value to individual segments. But all metrics simply aren’t important to every business. And that, my friends, is the point.
Google Analytics can tell us a lot about our businesses. Internet traffic comes qualified, many of which are Google or Facebook users that have told those applications a lot about their own likes and interest. So we can know if they are potential customers. This can help a business avoid wasting advertising spend. You don’t want to promote your product to people who aren’t likely to buy or sign up. So using those two programs as a base is largely important.
But not all metrics matter. The first time a site owner looks at Google Analytics, they tend to think that every metric matter. And that can be stressful and take you down the wrong paths. For instance, the number of total hits to your website may not matter, rather, the number of unique hits. You could get 3000 shares on Facebook through a promotion, but no sales because none of those people are potential customers. Or you could get 3 shares and 2 sales because you nailed the demographic.
Knowing and understanding metrics is a big part of our business as well. When it comes to protecting you from fraud, the name of the game is metrics. Triggers for fraud, stats that show us what type of check paper and envelopes fraudsters prey on, all have their place inside of our business acumen. But enough about us, get back to you….although, feel free to pick up the phone and give us a call, because we’d love to get to know you and your business!
Check Branding: It’s More Important Than You Think
Running and operating a small business is no small accomplishment. It’s all consuming and energy draining at times. You have to account for staff, paying bills and keeping up with production. You need happy customers and happy, yet motivated, employees. That’s a lot of energy to expand. And not a lot of time to expend it in.
That’s where Check Issuing helps. We take a load off, as the saying goes with our billing service for medical patients.
Check Issuing helps your company with issuing checks. We also help you monitor fraud on those issued checks. We offer an easy to use stats interface that provides you with all the metrics you care about. We make your check disbursement department a smooth machine.
In addition, we can help you with branding. By putting your companies logo on the top of your checks, we help give your company a professional feel that would otherwise be missing.
Check Issuing is your peace of mind. Call us today, let us get to know one another!
Should You Delete Bad Website Reviews Online?
One of the most controversial decisions a company has to make is if it should delete bad reviews when they are posted online. The specific emphasis being Facebook, but really, it could be anywhere whereas your company’s managing administrator has the power to delete user comments.
We are in the day and age of having all of your dirty laundries hung out to dry for everyone to see. Someone feels like their appetizer took too long to get placed on the table? They are on your Facebook page complaining about sweeping generalizations about you having slow service. And the worst part is, reviews matter. They matter a lot. No one is going to eat at your restaurant if your entire front page of Facebook is filled with comments detailing how bad your food is.
So should you delete bad comments?
In most cases, you should not. It just comes off as bad form. For one, people will sometimes take offense to the removal and start spreading it around on other networks whereas you can’t control whether it is published or not.
Your best move is to respond immediately. Have compassion and offer resolve. That will almost always trump the effect of a bad comment. It will make your company seem to stand up and responsive, as if to say, you care about the experience of your customers.
This isn’t to say that if someone comments with a profanity-laced review you shouldn’t hide it or remove it; but on the same note, just because someone use a curse word doesn’t mean you should take that as an opportunity to remove it. Even if you do end up removing a comment and you feel it is a legit customer, you should probably send them a message and ask them for more details to prevent them from feeling ignored.
