The eBiz Blog

The typical small business owner has advice coming at them from all directions. When it comes to making your business more relevant online, you might try anything from uploading fun games on the website to paying top dollar for the best Web graphics team. However, if you focus too much on your website’s pizzazz, you’ll miss out on the point of your website — to turn digital visits into actual sales. Business owners need to watch for signs they’re not making their websites useful enough and get to work on fixing it.

You Only Offer General Information

Your website might be enticing with an animated graphic, but when it comes to potential customers wanting to contact you, they have to search high and low for a tiny “contact us” button on the bottom of the page. When they want to see what you have to offer, they have to work their way through silly pictures of the staff or news about your latest awards. This information is useful, but it’s too general and should be secondary to the basics customers need when they are ready to make a purchase:

• What you sell, along with images, descriptions and prices
• Where they can get your products or services
• How they can get in touch with you

All of these items ought to be a click away (if not the first thing the customer sees) and not hidden behind impressive graphic wipes. However, don’t limit your website to just this info. Humanize your business with graphics and information about your staff, but make sure customers can easily access what they need first.

You Make Business Secondary

Don’t waste too much time on website gimmicks. Your website’s primary focus should be your business. The most complex things you should think about include:

• Making your website mobile-friendly
• Keeping your shopping cart checkout secure and simple
• Offering compelling content

You can offer videos, games and other bonuses. However, these should be secondary to your primary business functions and should never “pop up,” forcing users to wade through extras to get to the essentials.

You Don’t Have a Blog

You may think that your product or service is straightforward and that you have no use for a blog. Fox Business reports 56 percent of company websites with blogs updated monthly see more customers as a result, and 78 percent of businesses that blog daily received even more attention. An effective company blog isn’t just a place to share company news and highlight company promotions, although it should do that too , it’s a way to get customers to rely on your business as a source of helpful information.

Obviously, a daily blog is not in everyone's budget and you may have trouble trying to think of something new to write about more than once a week. Work at it with a goal of doing at least just that and you'll see a significant impact in no time.

Blog about trends in your industry as a whole. Share tips your customers would love to know. Highlight alternative uses for some of your bestselling products. Make your blog one of the focal points of your website and update it regularly with useful information so people bookmark your page or subscribe to your updates. The key is make it useful and not just a constant flow of marketing jargon. Growing your blog is growing your brand, which will make your company a customer’s first thought when a need arises.

Everything your business does, from choosing what products or services to sell to hiring the best employees to designing your website, comes down to attracting new customers and keeping current customers happy. That means not only being aware of the latest in trends and technology, such as an easy-to-use mobile site builder that lets you design websites to look good on mobile devices, but also paying close attention to what it is you have to offer. Yes, style is important, but substance is just as important. A balance of both and a focus on quality content should be your goal. Add attractive graphics and an easy-to-use interface to basic company information, and you’re good to go.