Yes, your website still matters. A lot.
Online marketing is central to promoting any small business. And even today — even with all the social media, videos, gamification, infographics, and customer relationship management — the center of your online promotions is still your website.
In previous blogs we’ve touched on various web promotion tactics like online advertising, Snapchat ads, online and mobile payment capabilities, amping up your infographics, sales promotions and search-engine optimization. But this month American Express shared this great infographic called “How to Build a Successful Website,” pointing out an obvious but core truth from which we often get distracted: “Without a strong website, you’ll have a hard time reaching customers.”
What makes a website win?
But what kind of website? Even a small business newbie with no IT professional on staff can manage to make a good, pretty and functional website with easy-to-use tools like Wix and Weebly. But beyond that, there are a few crucial — if subtle and simple — things you need to consider, design for or prepare for.
- Have you considered the power of a first impression on your customers’ emotional connection? Think about color and its impact on emotional response.
- How many of your customers will use mobile devices to find and interact with you? It may be more than you realize!
- Is your site so full of bells and whistles it’ll get bogged down, and be too frustrating to interact with?
- And, are you prepared for the ongoing demands — constant updates, new ideas, refreshing insights? You can’t let your site or its content get old! Who wants stale bread, when today’s customers have hundreds of options for fresh donuts, scones, croissants, daifuku, mosa, dumplings and bread pudding?
This infographic breaks them into an easily digestible To Do list — print it out and hang it next to your monitor as you consider how you might need to update your existing website, or launch your new company’s home on the internet:
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Who is John Paulsen? A former small-business leader myself, I feel your pain (and joy) and hope you’ll enjoy the blog. I launched and ran a well-regarded production company in San Francisco with a team of 9 brilliant, hard working people. I learned to manage a wide array of tasks a small business must handle — business strategy, facilities design, HR, payroll, taxes, marketing, all the way down to choosing telecom equipment and spec’ing a server system to help my team collaborate in real-time on dense media projects from multiple production rooms. I’ve partnered with and learned from dozens of small business owners.
