When working on a website for your business, it may not occur to you that you are also working on your marketing strategy. If you think about it, when you direct your social media traffic to your website, it needs to be making just as good an impression and your socials do, and vice-versa. Seeing your website as its own marketing strategy can help you look at it from an analytical standpoint rather than as a place to just contain some information about your business. Here we share 4 reasons why a website is your most valuable tool for marketing your business.
1. Your website tells a story
These days your customer’s first impression of you can come through many channels – social media, your website, or even word of mouth. But ultimately if the customer is serious about buying into your product or service, they will most likely end up at your website.
A professional, modern, and user-friendly website instantly builds credibility. A slow, outdated, or poorly designed one? Well it could deter those customers to look elsewhere. More importantly, if you are a creative professional, having a standout, sleek website reassures your potential customers that they are investing in someone that knows what they are talking about and can deliver the same quality design that their website presents.
2. It’s the centre of all your marketing channels
Ultimately your website is a hub for all your other marketing channels. Your site links out to all your socials and your socials should link back to your website. Your ads and promos lead customers to your site, your SEO strategy is embedded in your site’s infrastructure and your email newsletters link back to your site too.
All paths point back to your website. If it doesn’t impress and engage your customers – all your hard work that you put into your marketing efforts won’t convert and reach their full potential.
3. It converts casual browsers into loyal customers
The main role of any website is of course to turn website traffic into leads and those leads into long standing customers. Through strategic UX design, compelling calls to action, stimulating landing pages, easy to use forms, and intuitive messaging, your site can be the conversion tool that you always wanted it to be.
Even though they may seem like small steps, when a site easily allows users to take a step closer to investing in your business – whether that means booking a call, filling out a form, buying a product, or signing up for your newsletter, these micro-interactions can lead to bigger wins in the long run.
4. You can track customer behaviour
If you don’t use them already, analytics are a key tool to track visitors to your site, you can see what they do, where they are drawn too, and using that information you can optimise your site and ensure you are using the best practices to attract and maintain your ideal demographic.
Ultimately, you can see where your customers are dropping off at vital points – maybe they visit your online shop but they don’t purchase anything or maybe they frequently visit your contact page and don’t get in touch. Using these insights you can fine tune your website, and therefore your marketing strategy, based on real behaviour.
When it comes to your website, there is no doubt that it’s an important piece of your business, but when you think of it exactly as it is – a marketing strategy, you can start to use it as the valuable tool it is. A visually pleasing, well functioning, and fully optimised website can transform your business and help you reach your goals quicker and with more intention.