Are you new in business and want to get new customers to your website? Great! Or, maybe you are looking to expand your business by getting more new customers to find you online.
Either way, you are among the 27 million other small firms in the U.S. Across the U.S, small enterprise failure rates rose by 40% between 2007 and 2010, according to a Dun & Bradstreet report quoted on CNN.com.
Want to avoid being among the small enterprise fatalities each year? Far better. You will need to get new buyers to find your business online, so read more.
The Point of Your Website is to Get New Buyers
Your number one challenge is how to get clients to find your website. Why? Because studies show that everybody begin purchases on the Web using a search engine. Don’t you?
Solo professionals frequently make a giant mistake when developing their sites. They forget to consider their ideal buyer. Avoid make this common mistake!
Create each piece of info on your website from your customers ‘ perspective. That includes your subjects, how you describe solutions, and the words and terms you select. Make your website content talk straight to your ideal clients.
If you apply the guidelines and avoid the web site mistakes detailed below, you can make it more likely to get new customers to find your site. If you fail to consider the recommendations contained below, it’s going to be more difficult for you to easily be found by buyers on the web.
Top 9 Mistakes to Avoid with Your Business Site
1. Hiring a web developer before doing homework about your clients. While you want a polished site design, the most important thing of your website is your information and content! Plan your website content based on your buyer needs first.
2. Not profiling your most ideal buyers. Clarify who your best prospective buyers are. Develop a complete profile of your best clients with more granularity than age and sex. Include the competing issues they face as well as those your services or products resolve. Consider their buying cycle.
3. Not zeroing in on your buyers’ most persistent roadblocks. A business website that doesn’t highlight your buyers’ main headaches and top concerns is a waste of effort. You’ll be more successful by talking about your buyers’ issues. Avoid having a business full of content that talks mainly about your company.
4. Not documenting a job profile for your business site. Never thought about a job description? You will be investing time and money into your business site. Manage it like you would a team member or a contractor. Identify specifically what you expect it to do for your business. As an example, generate leads, collect customer e-mails, or encourage downloads of your content.
5. Not using your customers’ own language in your business website content. Future purchasers have words and terms they use everyday. Remember how they describe issues. You are an expert and may use industry lingo or terms unfamiliar to your customers.
6. Not studying your competition. It’s easy to discover what other firms like yours are doing right and doing wrong on their websites. Don’t overlook the lessons you can gather from other industry sites.
7. Not setting up a company blog. According to a study from marketing firm Hubspot:? Businesses are now in the minority if they fail to blog. From 2009 to 2011 the percentage of companies with a blog grew from 48% to 65%.
Here’s another Hubspot finding: Companies are aware their blog is extremely valuable: 85% of businesses rated their company blogs as useful, important or critical; an additional 27% rated their company blog as ?critical to their business.
8. Not setting aside a budget for your website. You can use free or low cost internet site and blogging software like WordPress. You’ll still need web developer help unless you’re fairly technical. Budget suitably for this key portion of your business.
9. Not learning how to research keywords to be used in your content. Your customers enter certain words and phrases into search engines when looking for help on the web. Check out the valuable keyword identification articles that Google publishes.
Be very clear about what you need your site content to say about your business. Potential clients form an instant impression about you from your business site.
If you are starting out in business, or revamping your current site. Stop. Take a big breath. Avoid racing to just-get-a-website-up. Consider the optimum way to use what you know about your customers in your content. Put everything you’ve learned into your website and business blog content. Good luck!
Cynthia Trevino works with business owners and solo professionals who want to attract more customers using smart, practical business blogs and website content. She blogs at SmallCompanyBigImage.com