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No single aspect of marketing is more important than a quality website, your organization’s front door. A “good” website isn’t good enough to break through and to convert users into engaged customers and brand ambassadors. What you really need is a great website. Thousands of pre-made templates and themes make creating a website easy—if all you want is a simple, off the shelf website that looks professional enough to give business a basic start. But to differentiate in today’s competitive landscape, you need a website as unique as you are. So, what makes a great website? 1.   Well Designed and Functional Your site reflects your company, your products, your services and ultimately your brand. So it’s important to be visually appealing, polished and professional. Allow white space, uncluttered layouts with quality photographs and graphics look and let your message shine through. (See examples.) Equally important, the site must work quickly, correctly and as expected. Build to web standards, proofread rigorously and test regularly for problems with speed or functionality. Every page should always be fast and functional, because any of them could be a potential customer’s first or only impression. Broken, slow, or poorly constructed areas will leave your visitors frustrated and encourage them to leave. 2.   Easy to Use Site visitors are always in a hurry. Don’t make them work for information. User Experience (UX) plays a key role in helping visitors use, understand and stay on your website. Create obvious, logical navigation with clear hierarchy. Use consistent layouts and visual cues for functionality across the site. Your site should satisfy both ‘searchers’—coming for something specific, and ‘browsers’—just looking. Help users accomplish their tasks quickly with onsite search, and keep them engaged by suggesting related content and minimizing dead ends. 3.   Optimized for Mobile Today there are no excuses, your site must look great and work well on any platform. The growth of mobile and tablet devices is not slowing down and you just don’t know what your next visitor will be using. Optimizing for mobile will improve both the experience of your visitors and your SEO Rankings. 4.   Fresh, Quality Content Be succinct, interesting and new. Use language that makes sense to your audience—avoid jargon, corporate speak and acronyms. Explain your “Why.” Visitors have short attention spans: spell correctly, be accurate, be relevant and update regularly. (Some tips here.) Blogs and social media updates are great ways to add fresh content, which keeps visitors returning and helps SEO strategy. Yes, keeping things fresh requires a bit of investment. No, you can’t do without it. 5.  Readily accessible contact and location Your audience won’t chase you down. Make it easy to engage, offer multiple points of contact: phone, email, social media and maybe an easy-to-use contact form. A Google map is a bonus. Above all, ensure that this information is readily available on an easy-to-find contact page—if not every page of your site. 6.   Clear calls to action If your site asks nothing of visitors, they will surely do nothing. What is the purpose of your site? Is that purpose clear to visitors? Even informational sites want visitors to read and share articles, follow the company on social media, download toolkits, join mailing lists or learn more about the organization. Include an ask on each page. 7.   Optimized for Search and the Social Web It’s not enough to build a nice looking website that’s easy to use. It needs to earn traffic. Otherwise, all that effort in design, UX and content development will be for naught. There are hundreds of rules and guidelines for effective search engine optimization, so here are a few to start with: Use page titles and meta tags on every page and alt tags on every image. Optimize content on your site to align with words real people search for. Use keywords appropriately in content and links. Use Cascading Style Sheets for layout and keep your HTML code clutter-free. Make it as easy as possible for visitors to share your content. Social can drive large volumes of traffic and positively impact your search ranking. Don’t forget obvious sharing links (even if they are rarely used in actuality). This is a high-level overview of seven deep topics! These basic tenets will help you start getting more value out of your web presence as you move toward the great website you need. For a deeper dive, contact us. How Ideas On Purpose Can Help For over 20 years IOP has been helping companies of all sizes with their purpose-driven communications, including websites, corporate reporting and ESG storytelling. Our strategy, content, digital and creative teams are ready to help you define and tell your story. Feel free to email us, we’re happy to discuss the possibilities.

A business’s online presence, regardless of industry, can have a massive impact on its success. In this day and age, some businesses still don’t realize that a majority of their customers will visit their website before making a purchase. Having a strong online presence, particularly a website, can be make or break for generating more revenue. Yes, the quality of your website impacts results, but the purpose of this article to stress the importance of making sure you have a website. I’ve helped numerous companies of varying sizes create their digital presences. In some cases, organizations are hesitant to get online because they feel they are not tech-savvy enough and don’t understand how to manage a website. Other times, companies are concerned about the price. The good news is that there’s a solution out there that will work for you. If you still need convincing, here are the top reasons it’s important for your business to have a website: Credibility One of the main reasons you should have a website for your business is to increase your organization’s credibility. Chances are there are several providers offering a similar service to yours. One way you can stand out is by having a website that looks good and clearly communicates quality information to your consumers. Without a website, people may question your legitimacy as a business. Having a website is an opportunity to make a great first impression and give people comfort that you’re a real business. Brand Showcasing your brand to your prospective customers is one of the most important things that you can do. By clearly establishing who you are, what you represent and what you stand for, you increase the chances of your customers buying from you. This is also something that can set you apart from your competitors. Without a website, it can be incredibly challenging to do this because people can’t easily find quality and reliable information on your business. Leads Perhaps one of the most intriguing reasons to have a website for your business is because it can increase your chances of getting leads. Once people find you online, become interested in your product or service and want to know more, they’ll know how to contact you thanks to the information on your website, which gives you the opportunity to increase your sales. Even though websites have a cost, when used correctly, they have a positive ROI. Organic Traffic  Once you’re online and have an SEO-optimized website, you have a chance of showing up in Google search results. This means that when people are searching for a product or service, there is a chance your website will show up in the results. This gives you the opportunity to drastically increase your customer base. Saving You Time + Customer Service Many businesses get calls from prospects or existing customers asking simple questions about location and hours of operation. If you miss a call, the customer is left unhappy. Calls can also distract your staff from focusing on the most important parts of your business. A website can reduce these calls and increase internal productivity. At the same time, it helps customers find useful information without needing to call, which ultimately provides an all-around better user experience. Updates And Announcements Since your website is on 24/7, it’s easy to post updates and announcements to your customers. It’s a way to keep them up to date on everything that you’re doing. When something is particularly relevant to them, it increases the chance of you being able to upsell them. Digital Marketing If you plan on leveraging digital marketing to increase your leads and grow your business, you’ll likely want to drive traffic to a website or landing page. To do this effectively, leverage historic traffic that has been going to your website so you can target the most qualified customers and get the best ROI on your ad spend. This is something that can’t be set up retroactively, so it is best to get your website running early even if you’re not planning on running ads at the moment. Websites have become essential to business today. I strongly recommend creating one if you haven’t done so already. You can improve it over time, but the key is to start. Source: Forbes