Intro

Having a presence on the internet is an absolute must these days. The internet plays a major part in the lives of a large percentage of the population, to discount that fact and to not set up a website would be a major downfall in the growth of your business and would mean that your direct competitors are likely to be soaking up your market share.

Websites are a number of things,

• Information portals
• Online Shops
• Online Galleries
• Social interaction hubs
• Or a mixture of the above

It is important to understand that when you decide to set up your website that you also factor in marketing your website through own marketing material, email campaigns, a well structured SEO campaign, Pay Per Click Ad word campaigns, social media strategies and blogging.

It is no longer enough to just develop a website and make it live, you have to work it and expose it to the right channels.

Remember that the copy that you choose to insert into your website MUST contain keywords – which are terms that you know that your business will be found from. i.e if you sell blinds in Brisbane, you might should ensure that your copy suggests that you sell Blinds in the Brisbane area. Then when you set up your ad words campaign you would use the search term “buy blinds Brisbane” or “Brisbane Blinds” so that your keywords on your site and your search terms collectively index you higher on search engines.

Definition

Website – an electronic facility that showcases your business to a mass global marketplace.

Benefits

• You are exposed, you can be found instead of you finding customers.
• Once set up it is a cheap way to market your business effectively.
• You can link all of your other marketing back to the website.
• You can direct people to the website to answer common questions, this makes you appear efficient and saves your staff time repeating themselves.
• You can post forms and information that people request fro your business constantly online so again you are saving time.

Pros

• You have a presence on the internet
• Customers will find you
• You can use it as a customer service tool kit to reduce repetition in the workplace
• You can sell your goods online to a global audience
• It is the easiest and best way to market your business available today. 

Cons

• It takes time to set up a website
• You have to constantly update it to remain highly ranked
• You have to consider paying for search engine ads (PPC)
• You need to work at getting your website ranked high enough to be noticed (SEO)
• If you don’t understand technology it can be hard to get your head around – but there is help available.

How to Implement this into your Business

Fill in our website planning form, this will help you to think about what you want your website to do, use our business directory to choose website developers and then send the form to them to quote on it.

Think about what keywords your customers will use to find your business. Then put those keywords into the keyword tool and see how popular those keywords are.

Choose images from stock photography websites if you do not have images you want to use. www.istockphoto.com or www.canstockphoto.com

Set up a comprehensive SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy alongside a PPC (pay per click) advertising campaign to ensure your website appears on the first page of Google for certain relevant search terms.

Tips

• Make sure you factor in that you have to market your website
• Set up seasonal campaigns and changes you might make to the website and add them to your marketing planner.
• Set up a social media strategy and stick to it
• Become an expert in your field and blog about your specific industry.