Website Development And Promotion: Why It Is Important For Small Business
A website is one of the fastest and most effective ways to tell the world about your company, to post the necessary information about it, as well as its products, services, and prices. According to statistics, the Internet for customers is the second most trusted and important source of information after television. Every year the number of Internet users is constantly growing, and with it, the consumption of information online is increasing. Thus, the website development and promotion open up completely new opportunities for the entrepreneur to interact with the audience.
3 Ways of Website Development
So, besides the question of why you need a website, there is another question – how to create it? There are several ways to solve this problem, and the choice of appropriate one depends on the needs and resources of your company.
1. Ordering A Website (Eg, In A Web Studio Or Freelancer)
Large organizations, which have large requests for sites, go this way. In this case, the site will be created specifically for the customers, taking into account their requirements and wishes. It will need a separate hosting, domain, and management system, but this is usually taken care of by the performer of the project. The cost of such a project can be quite high. It all depends on the complexity of the task, the timing and quality of execution, and even the fame and experience of the studio. To manage such a website development and its promotion, you need either additional knowledge or additional costs to pay for support from the web studio.
The success of your online business also depends on the content you share with your visitors. High-quality content is one of the main conditions for good ranking in Google. Where can you get quality content for your website? You can hire a copywriter or go to paper writing help online services to get texts selling your product or just get inspired.
2. Creating A Website On Your Own Or Having An Administrator In Working Staff
What to do if there is no money to order a website in a web studio? You can make it on your own, but you need programming skills and, at a minimum, knowledge of HTML and CSS. If the entrepreneur has no such skills, they will have to hire a staff member who will deal with the creation of the site and support it in the future. The advantages of this method, in principle, are similar to the benefits of creating a website in a web studio, but the quality of performance depends on the skills of a particular employee. In addition, if the entrepreneur is not an expert in web design and programming, the company incurs the fixed costs of maintaining an additional employee in the state. It is also important to remember that in this case, the company owner will need to take care of hosting and domain for the site and their timely payment.
3. Website Development With The Help Of A Constructor
The modern small business owner is an orchestrator human. They have either to be a specialist in many areas or to outsource some tasks, which, as we have already understood, means additional costs. You need to accomplish many tasks if you have an online business, such as website development and its promotion. It may be done independently without any technical knowledge thanks to the advancement of cloud technology. To do this, you simply need to use a special service – a website builder. As a rule, these services are very easy to manage and do not require special skills in programming, HTML or CSS. Building a site takes place directly in the Internet browser.
Cloud Services And Web Development
Why is it profitable to use cloud services? The pros of this method are the ease of use of the service, its affordability, savings on staffing, and an all-inclusive policy. As a rule, hosting, domain, and content management system are already included in the subscription price, and technical support is provided by the service staff, if necessary. The cost of owning a paid site in the cloud is usually very democratic. This is due to the scalability of the service: the more clients the site constructor has, the more favorable prices it can offer its users.
The disadvantages of this method are limited design capabilities. However, all the necessary functions for the company website or a novice online store are still provided. When choosing a service, it makes sense to learn how long it has existed on the market, how many users it has, in what countries it operates, how its support service and customer training is organized.
What Should Your Website Look Like?
Before the website development and promotion, you need to understand what you need it for, what its goals are.
The business card site or online store should be:
- accurate and clear. From the first page the visitor must understand what this site is about, and what the company is engaged in, presented on it;
- convincing and credible;
- selling. The visitor should believe that the products or services of this very company – the best.
What You Need to Think About First, Creating a Website
- about the structure of the site;
- on the color scheme;
- on the content, including the ratio of text to images.
The structure of the site should be thought out from the very beginning. It should be simple and straightforward. For example, it is desirable not to place more than 6 sections in the upper level of navigation. These should be the main sections of your site, such as News, Goods, About the company, Blog, Contact. On the second and third levels of navigation, you can place more detailed information. For example, the section “Goods” can be divided into sub-items corresponding to the names of products.
The choice of the color scheme depends on the purpose of the site. If the site should cause positive emotions, “wow effect”, it is better to choose shades of red and orange. For a business card site is more suitable green, blue and gray colors. Also, the site of the company is not good to use very bright, acidic colors. If your company already has a corporate color, then, of course, it is best to use them.
The Basics Of Website Promotion
Usually, people search for all kinds of information with the help of Google. If you don’t have a website and your competitors do, online users become potential customers of your competitors. And even if your business provides better services and products, the online audience will never know about them.
In addition, search services, in turn, try to give an answer to the user’s query, taking into account their needs, their search history, and location as much as possible. Search engines process the client’s request and show them only relevant sites in the search results. Thus, to be at the top of search results must be engaged in website promotion on the Internet.
SEO or Contextual Advertising?
With the help of search engine optimization (SEO) or contextual advertising, you can achieve a significant influx of visitors to the site.
The advantage of contextual advertising is that it gives a quick effect and an influx of new visitors to the site. But there are also disadvantages: you need a budget for advertising, as well as a knowledgeable specialist or agency.
The advantage of search engine promotion is that the budget is not needed in this case, if you do it yourself. The disadvantage of this method is the slow result, as it takes months and painstaking work for the site to appear at the top of search results.
A Plan of The Website Promotion
Before you promote the site, it must be fully ready with the structure, contact information, and registered domain. When you fill out the contact information, it is necessary to take into account that the phone is listed along with the city code. Make sure there is a full mailing address and email address that matches the domain address. Before you go to the promotion, you should answer the question – why do you promote the site? And set a goal. This can be an increase in traffic and an increase in sales.
Then you can act on the following plan:
- Make up a kernel of search queries;
- Form clusters of search queries;
- Create landing pages for clusters;
- In the case of contextual advertising – give ads for relevant landing pages. In the case of SEO – to place links to landing pages on the home page of the site.
- It should be understood that website search engine promotion is a long-term process. Regular updating of the information on the site in this case is necessary for successful search engine promotion.
