Many business owners don't do their homework before hiring a web design agency or a freelancer. They are then stuck with their websites and success becomes just a dream. They face the worst problems such as:
- The website never gets completed
- When they look at the website, it feels like something is missing
- Website looks creepy and irrelevant
- Unfinished errors and irrelevant design structure
- High level of dissatisfaction
- After marking the site as complete, they find they skipped a very important point
- The site doesn’t represent the idea of the business
I see this problem very often, which is why I decided to address this. I believe in your empowerment as a business owner. You should do your homework before hiring anyone because no one understands your business like you do.
To be successful in the digital world, you as a business owner have to get your hands wet with the strategy before you can rely on others to implement that strategy. If you don’t have any plan or strategy, you are at the mercy of the digital agency. Everyone will give you their advice and you will feel stuck and confused because you don’t your own strategy. If you have a plan in hand, you have a clear map towards your success, and the achievement of those mentioned goals is easier without any distraction.
Here are a few simple steps, which will help you create a proper plan before hiring any freelancer or design agency to take care of the digital side of your business.
Recall your Business Idea:An idea is the first milestone in the process of building a successful business. It can be anything: a pizza shop, a consultancy firm, a retail store or a B2B company. Recall your idea and write it in your notebook again because it is the base of your business and the base determines the building.
Set Your Goals:A goal is simply defined as a person's ambition, effort, aim, or desired outcome. If you want to be successful in your business and life, you must have a set of goals and think about them always because you are what you think. Define goals for the digital side of your business and stick with them. For example you might set a goal that you want to win 10K subscriptions in the next 3 months.
The Target Audience:The target audience is a group of people at which some product or services are aimed, such as a film or advertisement. Every business has a specific target audience because every stalker is not the buyer. For example a car repair expert shouldn’t target people who don’t have a car. His target audience should be the people who have a car, he will market to them to fix their cars and earn business.
You need to know who your target audience and watch their behaviors: what they do, where they go, what they buy, which social media network they are using, and which places they hang out, so that you can have some activity there.
“Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, ‘make me feel important.’ Never forget this message when working with people.” -Mark Kay Ash
Conduct a competitive analysis:To be successful, you need to know what other in the same industry are doing and which strategies they are using, you have to find get idea of the insights to make a different strategy to stand out with your business idea.
What story you are going to tell?You need to pitch with a different story than others to have an awesome impact ont the visitors to let them act on our site. You will have the difference after conducting a competitive analysis and will know your story and how you need to tell your story to make you standout from the competition.
Why should you actually have a website?In old times, the website acted as a brochure, but now the targets are different. In this growing era of digital economy, businesses are using internet as a marketing channel and use their websites as a base for their marketing.
Every sensible business owner knows that they need to have an audience on their website who interact with their business through the web channels. Your Mission about your target audience should be to make them want to visit, interact, and read your website regularly, and keep them in touch with your business so that they can know your brand and use it in the time of need.
What if i rely on social media?Many business owners don’t have a website, but rely on social media. They only have their business on Facebook, but don’t realize that a single policy change in Facebook can destroy all their business. It is quite unreliable, so instead you should understand the right channel.
You should have your own website and then to create an audience for your site you should market your content on the social media Simple! the strategy should be Website -> Content -> Market -> Social Media -> Ads.
In this way, the target customer actually interacts with your business, and the marketing channels are just being used as activity holders. In the real time, you are building your own audience on your own website.
If you follow this structure, the traffic will float back to your site, and ultimately interaction will happen. If you do not a website, the traffic will be floating only on social media. If something happens that results in the end of social media, where will you and your business stand?
An important fact is that social media is becoming more and more content populated and marketing oriented, and less authoritative like the TV. Anyone can post an ad, but the advertisement does not prove their authority. But the website and its content can satisfy the customers more than a facebook page.
Know the devicesRight now, we are quickly moving towards a hyper internet era where we are using internet as a daily need and relying on different devices to meet our needs, such as mobile phones, tablets, laptops, desktop PCs, and new devices that are still being released.
You need to cater to all devices for your business to have the stable look and feel on all platforms.
The website contentNinety percent of company websites talks about themselves, but there are a few businesses who make the content audience oriented and address the person who is reading. When you make your website audience oriented, it draws them in and makes them want to return to your website.
Blog StrategyRight now, it is very important to share content on the websites because it will prove your credibility in your industry, and create interaction on the website. We mostly use the blogs for content sharing in a content managed system. You need to know what you are going to share and how often you should share content on your website. Both these things determine your blogging strategy, which will be the base of your content marketing strategy.
You should have a more appealing and content rich blog to beat the competition and have an increased number of visitors. You should educate your target audience about your industry and share quality content.
Choosing the right Domain NameWhen choosing a domain name, it should be short and unique so that it is easily remembered. You can use Instant Domain Search to search the available domain names. Your domain name should reflect your company, what you do, and who you are in a few simple words. Naturally, you will also need a hosting company to go with your domain name.
Choose the Right hosting companyThe right hosting company is the one which offers faster server response time and is easy to manage web and email. GoDaddy is the best hosting provider till now but you can search for more options and decide according to your requirement.
Which Content Management System to useIf you are going to interact with the audience on a daily basis, you should have a content management system where you can easily login, post and manage all the content. You can choose WordPress , Joomla or Drupal whatever works for you. I will recommend WordPress as it’s easy and can meet all of your requirements in an efficient way.
Search Engine OptimizationSEO is an important factor to help the users find your site on search engines, because search engines popular traffic referrals. Some tips to maximize your SEO:
- Write optimized titles for every page of the site
- Write descriptions with the right keywords
- Submit the site in the most popular search engines
- Have a sitemap in the site so that every page can be crawled
- Use proper heading structure and avoid SEO errors
You can learn more about seo at moz .
Site SpeedOptimizing your website for speed can make a lot of difference in how your audience perceives your site. If it takes too long to load, users are likely to leave the page and not return. Google recommends having a site that loads in less than 5.0 seconds. This speed optimization ensures fast load times, a happy audience, thus, a happy business owner.
Using social media to integrateWhen determining your website’s audience, you should consider where your target is most active. Are they more active on Facebook and Instagram? Social Media for Business: The Small Business Guide to Online Marketing by Martin Brossman and Anora McGaha is a detailed reference to how social media can help your business. You can integrate these networks into your website so that your content is easily shareable, which allows your audience to spread word about your business. This helps you see some of the statistics for your traffic as well, in that you can see the shares and reposts from your audience.
Analytics IntegrationIn order to keep up with how many visitors your website gets, where they are coming from, and what they are doing while on your site, it is a great idea to integrate some analytic software into the site. Google Analytics is great for tracking these statistics for you. As a business owner, knowing the size, location, and activity of your audience can help you better your approach and grow your audience. If you want to check out the features that Google Analytics .
Email Signup formsWhen you are developing your website, you must also consider how you will build your audience. An easy way to do this is through email signup forms on your site. You can use popup versions of the forms and sidebar widgets on other pages to make it fast and simple for your audience to sign up. These email signups build your list, and will continue growing as your business does.
All the above mentioned points will help you make the right plan for the digital side of your business.It is hard work developing your own website! It is best to hire an expert who can use your plan and develop your website quickly and efficiently. If you are having any difficulty in creating your plan or in your website development, our experts can help you.
