3 Reasons You Need A Web Strategy If You Want To Grow Your Business

You saw ads and marketing telling you that you need a website, so you built one. But now that you have a website, what do you DO with it? Now it's time to put that website to work! Read on for 3 reasons why a web strategy is essential.

Your website is one of the most important tools you have when it comes to your business. You control the content, the layout and design, and ultimately how it represents your brand. I recently read a statistic that 97% of people will visit a website before they ever make contact with a business. That's practically everyone!

1. Your website is the front door to your business.

When someone meets you or walks through the doors of your business for the first time, you work hard to make a good impression.

You smile. You make eye contact. You’re warm, friendly, and upbeat.

Why?

Because first impressions matter.

In just a few seconds, your potential customers are evaluating you, your store, your products, how interested you are in them as a person. These moment are crucial as people form their first opinions of who you are.

If it’s a positive experience, they feel great, and are more likely to become a repeat customer. If it happens to be a negative experience, it will stick with them for a long time, and they may not be back. Either way—they’ll probably tell their friends.

Just like physical first impressions, your website is the first impression people will have about your business.

What is it saying about you?

• Have you put thought about the first words that people read?

• Is the navigation simple and clear?

• Is the way you talk about your business consistent?

• Is it easy to find what your potential customers are looking for?

• Is there an easy way to contact you?

These questions are just here to get you thinking. The point is that, you are able to craft the experience you want first time customers to have.

Do you want people to feel good and excited about visiting your store?

Perhaps strong, confident, and secure about your services.

How about at ease and casual like you’re an old friend.

Or maybe you just want to get their taste buds going with some mouth watering images of really good food.

Whatever the case, take some time to think about it and write it down. Use this to form a strategy around what you want people to experience on your website. Work that in through your content, your blog posts, your images, and your video.

As you take these steps, you’ll be able translate that in-person experience to your online experience.

You’ll make a better first impression.

You’ll charm people.

You’ll make them feel comfortable.

And as you make a good first impression, your visitors will be much more likely to become customers.

2. Your website is your online platform

Publishing content on social media is a great marketing tool. It's incredibly effective and you absolutely should be active on social media, engaging people. BUT—if you use it without a strategy of sending people back to your website, you're not maximizing your effort!

Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, they all have one thing in common—they want to keep you and others on their platform.

Why?

Because it helps them build their business.

But you're doing the same thing—building a business. And to do that, you need people to visit your website. As people visit your website lots of things are happening. Let's unpack that:

• You’re building awareness around your company’s brand.

• You’re promoting discoverability by making it easier for people to explore what your business has to offer.

• As people engage with your content, you begin improving your search engine rank, making it easier for new customers to find you.

As you publish to social media, be creative, let people see what you’re all about, but don’t forget to be intentional about linking back to your website.

3. More website traffic = more customers

Reason 3 is a little more nuanced.

At face value, more traffic to your site doesn't automatically mean you'll get more customers.

BUT—coupled with the right strategy, you will significantly improve your chances.

While it's certainly more complex than this, we're going to focus on 2 things: Conversions + SEO.

Conversions

A conversion takes place whenever a person does something on your website that you deem valuable.

It could be watching a video, completing a contact form, clicking a button to chat with someone, or simply visiting a specific page.

If you're using Google Analytics, you're able to define what counts as a conversion using their built in tools. This is an easy way to see what percentage of your traffic is converting and in which areas.

This is an incredibly important part of your web strategy because it allows you to define what actions lead to more sales. As you measure your conversion results, you can begin to experiment with ways to increase your conversion rate or each item.

Without a strategy, you wouldn't know what to focus on, but with it, you're able to be intentional about what you're tracking, and in turn measuring the results.

If you're new to the world of web analytics, here are a few tools to help you monitor your web presence and increase traffic.

SEO + Content Marketing

SEO. You've heard the acronym, but it sounds like a foreign language. Simply put, Search Engine Optimization is a phrase that encompasses configuring your website content in a way that helps people who are looking for specific words or phrases to find relevant content.

Content marketing is a way that you can craft interesting content on your website that your ideal customer would find valuable and in turn share it with people they know.

Good SEO and content marketing go hand in hand.

SEO gives you an advantage by helping you be intentional about the keywords and phrases you want to be known for, and offering you tools to make the best decisions.

One of the ways a web strategy can help your grow is by writing content that is so compelling that people want to share it! As people share your website or link to a blog post, SEO helps search engines find your content and make it available to the right people.

How does it work?

Search engines often display results that are relevant and popular to the phrase searched for.

As people view and share your content, this sends a signal to Google that it should pay attention. This in turn, helps your business' website begin to show up higher in the list of search results. Which often means more people will find your content valuable and relevant, pushing it up the list. See the cycle?

Publishing relevant content on a consistent schedule helps turn the wheel of promotion. It may take some time to get it going, but once it starts, it will become easier and you’ll reap the benefits!

Wrapping Up

While there are plenty of other elements to consider with your web strategy, I hope these three gave you a place to start as you begin to implement new things to grow your business!

A strategy is not a magic formula—it is simply a plan of where you're going.

With a strategy in place, you'll be able to make intentional decisions as you move your business forward. This plan may grow and evolve over time as your business shifts and changes. That's ok!

Healthy things grow, so don't be afraid to adjust what's not working and improve the things that are.

With a little work and intentionality, your own web strategy will help you stay one step ahead of the competition. 🎉