28.08.2009
A commercial website (sole trader, small business, limited company etc.) has become the single most important marketing tool, bar none.
Your website is available to the world, and even if your client base is local, it will potentially reach a great deal more customers, more cost effectively than traditional print marketing and advertising.
Today, if a consumer or business is looking for a product or service, the great majority will start with the internet. The commercial website has also taken the place of the company brochure as the lead vehicle for presenting a business to the world.
The internet is now recognised as the most effective and cost conscious way of selling to todays consumer, allowing a business to react almost instantly to changes in the market. Does this mean that printed sales and marketing material are no longer required, no, but it does indicate that you will probably need to produce less than before.
So, a website seems to be the perfect marketing tool for all businesses.
Unfortunately it's not that simple. Producing a well designed website and populating it with content is the easy part.
A great looking website may well be a waste of money if:
- a) the content is not relevant and
- b) no one finds you when they search for your product or services.
This is where the website professionals will earn their fee, explaining what's involved, advising a client on their websites content, how it should be presented visually, how it should be written and how often it should be added to and updated, what not to include and what should be avoided.
The internet is a very different design medium to traditional print and needs a thorough understanding of what works and what doesn't, and as it is always evolving, continual training for the website professional is vital.
The other major area to get correct is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Producing a great website is much less effective if it fails to list on pages 1 to 3 of any search result that you wish to target. For example if you are selling 'whirlpool baths' the competition may well run to over a million listings which means it will be very hard to get a page 1-3 placing (you only have 10 results listed on each page), and this is where local SEO search terms come in. Using location search terms can make a huge difference in getting a high ranking, so adding 'whirlpool baths surrey' will improve the ranking, sometimes dramatically.
It has been well researched that once a person is comfortable using the web they will often search for products on a more local level.
A good SEO professional will know how to construct and where to place all the relevant keyword and descriptions needed to achieve the best possible ranking for you website, its services or products.
To get it all correct and working effectively is not cheap, but it may be less expensive that you think, particularly if you take into account the potential savings to be gained on more traditional marketing literature.
One thing's for sure, if you don't have a website, or if you do and it has not been correctly built and does not have an ongoing SEO program, you WILL be losing out.
Ian Hamilton
