A useful website will be full of great content that’s relevant to what the user is looking for.  By becoming the customer, you can understand their fears, hopes and dreams and provide them true value in the form of your content, offer, products or services.

“Enter the conversation already taking place in the customers mind”, – Robert Collier.

Add traffic to the mix and you’re in action.  What’s the use of a great website without people looking at it? Whatever the asset is it’s important to look at return on investment.  Weather it’s your precious time spent building a website or you chose to invest coin in a web design company it is important to have a clear direction for your site and look at the result you’re wanting to achieve along with an accurate idea of the return on your investment you seek. Keep reading as we reveal exactly how we do this when building a local business website.  

Website Basics

These days everyone knows what a website is.  So, I’m not going to sit here and hand out a definition for what is a website.  Saying that, it doesn’t hurt to go back to basics.  Especially when we’re talking about websites that are to be set up as an asset for your business rather than building a website so that you can have your website URL printed onto a business card – Surprise!  This was me when I first started in business waaaaay back in the times of dial up internet.

5 pages that the big G (that’s Google) want to see rank within it’s search engine

• Home page
• About page
• Service page
• Contact page
• Terms and conditions page

Missing these foundations would be like trying to run a 100m sprint with a plaster cast on your left leg.  Totally doable [insert positivity here] – remember Steven Bradbury – but you’re highly unlikely to get a great result. It’s best to get the basics right from the start.

Number 1 mistake to avoid when investing in a website for your business

If you’re investing in your business, you want to own it.  It’s yours, right? Stick with me… this is the biggest mistake that I hear when talking with local business’ about web design: Creating a website using website building tools such as Wix etc. Here’s why:

1. You DO NOT OWN the website – they do (look at their Terms & Conditions!)
2. You DON’T have full control over your website AKA your business asset.
3. Their templates ARE NOT designed with your goals in mind.
4. They are search engine UNFRIENDLY – to be gentle, Google dislikes them.

Site ownership is essential.  A business website is just as valuable and important for you to understand and maintain as any other business asset.

Steps to creating a business asset online

How do we know what Google’s thinking so that we can make a website that is an asset?  To be honest, unless you work for Google you don’t know.  And if you do work for Google you’re sworn to secrecy.  And if you were working for them you wouldn’t be here – have you seen their office – a big fat hello to fun vibes and a sleep pod at smoko time!  Anyways, I’m getting off track. To best understand the ins and outs of making your website an asset, once you have built your site, each element of your site will need to be tested and measured.  The results then need to be analysed to find out what it is that brings traffic to your website. Ranking in Google is the first step to turning a website in to an asset.  This strategy is called Search Engine Optimisation – or SEO as the cool kids call it.  Jaw dropping moment:  you then want the people who land on your website to take a certain action which will then give you a specific result.  This action/result will vary depending on your business.

Results you may want to achieve from your business website are:

• More customers
• Increased sales
• Attracting a specific type of client
• Easily accessible information
• Lead generation
• Subscribers
• A competitive edge
• Increased credibility in your industry
• Improved customer retention
• A professional online web presence
• Visible on forms of technology – computer, tablet, mobile, voice assistants such as Google Home, Alexa or Siri
• Easily contactable

So, how did we compile these secrets on how to make your website an asset? 

The simple answer: With 21 years of having my skin in the game.  Test and measure.  I repeat: test and measure.

As a graduate of the E-Business Institute and an active part of their community I’m able to leverage my time as many hands make light work. As a collective we’re all using the same unique approach to digital marketing.  We test and measure sharing our results via our community increasing our ability to keep up with trends and changes within Google as they happen.

Combining our many hand make light work approach with ongoing training and mentoring from leaders in this field – Matt and Liz Raad of The E-Business Institute – we’re able to offer a full digital marketing experience that will get results. We’re here to future proof businesses by providing websites that work.