What your web site is currently doing, what it is NOT doing, and what it COULD be doing.

Now that Google are starting to rank responsive, mobile friendly sites up, and non responsive ones down, it’s a good time to think about what your web site is currently doing, what it is NOT doing, and what it COULD be doing.

It is an oft repeated mantra from us, but the Internet is only ever going to get more important, especially with the huge increase in mobile and tablet devices. Nowadays everyone browses the Internet to find whatever they are looking for. It’s the first thing you do when you are looking for something, and YOUR customers aren’t any different. It’s immediate, and the info they source is [or should be anyway] up to date. In addition, from the moment they land on your home page, they are building a picture in their mind’s eye of your business and the service you offer. Your web site has to build customer confidence. At the very least it has to do this better than your competitors.

We know there is a huge temptation to just leave a web site as it is, but technology moves ever onwards at an alarming rate and people expect more from a web site than ever before. There are continually better ways of doing things that make life easier for you and your customers. Furthermore, being found via search engines – be it via organic search results or paid for advertising – is now incredibly competitive, and is vital if your web site is to generate the enquiries and business that it should do.

After all, there is no point in having a good web site if no one is visiting it, and there is no point in driving people to a web site if it doesn’t give them what they want when they get there. Yet, every business has to have a web site, so it may as well be a good one which delivers what the customers wants, and it needs to generate traffic or it won’t generate business.

Your current web site can continue to be hosted in its present format for as long as you want it to be, but it will never do anymore than it is currently doing. Various features will work with fewer and fewer browsers, and you’ll probably slip lower down the rankings.

These are the facts, and if you are serious about using the Internet to develop your business you are going to need to look at investing in a newer, more modern web site that takes into account your specific needs. That’s only half the story, as it is no good having a great web site if no one is visiting it, and you are also going to have to invest in a more co-ordinated site marketing campaign that drives traffic to your web site.

Not surprisingly, as we build more and more web sites, and have access to newer and better technology to do so, we get better at it! It is no coincidence that the newer more responsive, mobile friendly websites we build generate more business, are kept more up to date, and are found higher in search engines. The more sites we build, the more we get involved in successfully marketing them.

There is a tendency to believe that you can build a decent web site, do some basic optimisation work and let it do its stuff – whatever that “stuff” is – but the days of just being able to upload content and expecting it to be found via search engines are, generally speaking, long gone. If your competitors are being found higher up the search engine listings than your site is, you need to do something about it. It won’t just climb higher by itself!

A lot of our clients are long established operations. By that we mean they already have a customer base and can naturally direct their customers to their web site via letterheads, brochures, adverts etc. When you start generating “some” enquiries and business from your web site, you have a tendency to think you are doing OK. That is until your eyes are opened one day when you see just how much business other people in your field are generating. It’s like thinking you are quite good at golf until you see Tiger or Rory hit a ball when they are on form. It is just jaw droppingly different!

For example, when you see a business generating in excess of £50,000 revenue per month from their web site because they invest over £1,000 per month on SEO and Google ads, the more you realise that you can’t just stand still.

The question is, do you want to do something about it? Do you want to keep traipsing along with an outdated web site that gets a limited number of visitors, or do you want to really go all out and turn your web site into the core of your business? Or even something in between? Do you want to just go to the Olympics, or compete to win a medal? Or just lie on the sofa and watch it on TV.

Like any other promotional tool, such as adverting in publications or colour brochures, doing things properly does cost money, but if your business is to develop and grow – or even just stand still in the current economic climate – you have to embrace the Internet more than you are currently doing. We are sure this isn’t what you necessarily want to hear, but we suspect you already know this in your heart of hearts anyway.

For more information, objective advice and practical solutions, contact us via our online enquiry form or telephone 01526 352919.