Online Strategy Myth: Build a Website and they will come

Online Strategy – A Website Without Good Content Will Surely Fail

Your business is not the field of dreams. If you build a website?people won?t ?just come.? Seriously, this is an online strategy myth we hear all too often!

Take these two very important points into consideration:

Your website cannot live in a vacuum
Your website is never?to be completely finished

Ok, take a second and let that soak in. Here?s another way of looking at it:

Your website is a dynamic organism that lives in a dynamic environment.

Now, think about your website. ?How do you expect your website to compete for customers within your industry unless you develop an online strategy?

In many ways a website is like a living, breathing thing. It requires attention and work in order to reach its full potential. ?Even the best website will under-perform if not continually updated and maintained.

So, now you understand that your website won?t work on its own. But why? ?What do you need to do? ?Well, there are some very specific things that can…

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?…take your website from the edge of irrelevance, to a web traffic machine.

Be Found Online: ?The purpose of your website is to be found in search engines. If you have zero visitors, you have zero purpose. ?Is your website a “billboard in the desert” without even a wagon trail going by… much less a two lane highway? ?Wouldn’t you rather have your site on a six-lane superhighway? ?To do this you must continually monitor what keywords your web traffic is using and?continually?optimize the site accordingly.

Offer Value: Consumers have the mentality, ?What?s in it for me?? meaning, when they visit your website they are going to be thinking the same thing! You need to provide value, something they can walk away with, like information or a download. This is where a blog can come into play. You can write short blurbs about the merchandise for which people are looking, posting new ones regularly. ?After all, you know more about your company than they do ? hence offering incredible value to their visit and a reason to come back to your website over and over.

Define Who You Are: If a website visitor can?t identify who you are, or what you do within seconds of visiting your website, you?ve already lost them. Your website should explain what you do and why you are the expert in concise common language. This information needs to be above the fold and in plain view so they don’t have to go looking for it.

Instill Trust: Your website is the base for all other digital marketing efforts. Your visitors must be able to trust you and your website immediately. ?That means it should be up to date, have a modern feel and provide the information for which your prospects are looking without making them work very hard. You will have a hard time collecting even a bit of information if you are not trusted.

Accomplishing a successful online strategy is not easy, but the return on investment is well worth the effort. Every website is unique, meaning different actions need to be taken to correct possible flaws. If you would like help with your website, we can perform an Inbound Marketing Assessment that offers detailed recommendations and calls any issues to your attention.