Top 5 Web Sites Must-Haves
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011
Your corporate website is the ultimate tool to get all of your company’s information out to your prospects. This is a long standing idea, and it has become an essential part of what your company offers, in terms of marketing.
But you need more than just information. There are five elements that every successful website should have. And I am going to tell you what they are.
1. Blogs
Having a blog is like killing multiple birds with the same stone. First, it is a great avenue for your business to create content and push it out through your site. You can give practical applications to your services and products, or you can use it to give a voice to your employees to talk about industry trends or topical news stories. This increases search engine optimization. Google loves well-written, relevant content. Blogs are a necessity for your website.
2. Email Sign Up
Your website can be a tool for you to compile a loyal following of your content. Create a way for people to sign up and offer their email to your company. You can compile a database of email addresses, and send out a monthly eNewsletter, which can be made from the most important recycled blog posts from the past month. This way, you can be absolutely sure that you are reaching a consistent audience, and you can tailor your content to effectively connect with your email database.
3. Calls To Action
A call to action is basically a request to “do something” on your website. It could be a button asking to donate, register, click for information or whatever you might want a reader to do. These can be incredibly powerful tools for you to harness. Having a concise number of calls to action can amplify their importance. Offering freebies or incentives in exchange for your audience clicking on your calls to action can increase the amount of information you can give out, and it can also be a gauge for the amount of interest generated by those calls.
4. Social Media Friendly
Link your website to all of your social networks. Integrate your various online platforms, and have all of the social media badges in one place. Make it easy for users to follow you on Twitter and like you on Facebook. Use every available channel to promote yourself, and provide those channels for your audience. Let your message resonate on more than one site that your followers spend time on. They should see posts from you on Facebook, read tweets, see links to YouTube videos, and all of these should drive traffic back to your site.
5. Easily Updated
There is no sense in making a fantastic website if it is too difficult to make changes. Odds are that you will be changing around content on your website on a somewhat regular basis. Using user-friendly web platforms, like WordPress, make website management easy for all of your staff members to use. The easier it is to maintain, the better off you are. Team members can participate in blog efforts, make sure to update information on services and more.
They are five simple tips, but your website quality will improve and so will your search results. Your site will become a more comprehensive reflection of your business.
