Your company’s website is more important than having an office.
Why? Because your website promotes your business 24/7, worldwide – show me any other marketing tool that can do that.
Closed for Business
If you have a neglected or tired website it is akin to hanging up a sign on your front door that says ‘Closed for Business.’
Think about it; when you land on a website that looks old fashioned and outdated you instantly make assumptions…and they’re generally not good. Thoughts will flash through your mind like:
“I wonder if their products and services are outdated too?”
“If they don’t care about their website, will they care about me?”
“Are these people really in the 21st Century…?”
An old fashioned website damages your credibility; it can make your business look like a dinosaur. Companies are perceived to have a higher value when they are professional, forward-thinking and cutting-edge.
Not only that, but an out-of-date site makes your competitors look better and guarantees your Google rankings will drop like a stone. There’s also the issue of security. Old sites use old technology, making the chances of a security breach far higher.
Love at First Sight
Well, maybe not love, but your website is judged by its appearance – research has shown that website visitors’ credibility ratings are 75% based on overall aesthetics. That’s how important the look and feel of your website is.
To make matters worse, apparently our average attention span has fallen from 12 to 8 seconds since the turn of the century. Ignoring the fact that this is a shorter attention span than that of a goldfish (although how they’ve worked that one out, I’m not sure), it doesn’t give your website much time to impress.
That means your home page has to immediately scream out at your target audience, “This is the right site for you; we have exactly what you’re looking for and clicking here will get you to the information you want fast.”
Talk Their Language
The goal of your website is not to sell to people. People don’t want to be sold to, they want to buy, on their terms and when they’re ready.
So the job of your website is to create trust and credibility by providing all your different buyers with the information they are looking for in an easy to access format. At the end of the day, they’re just like you; they want proof that you have the right experience, the right products or services and the right track record.
If you tick all the boxes, there’s a good chance they’ll pick up the phone or drop you an email to find out more.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
A staggering 2.9 billion Google searches are made every day. Google is the go to search engine for the majority of the world. If your site is not search engine optimised you’ve probably got more chance of winning the lottery than being found on a Google search.
The search engines, and particularly Google, are constantly changing the algorithms they use to provide better search results. Consequently, if your site is more than three or four years old, the chances are it will be almost invisible.
Not only is B2B SEO important, but so too is fresh content. Google loves to see relevant new content on your site because it confirms you’re active and you care. This means that having a regularly updated and relevant blog on your site is now essential.
The Pace of Technological Developments
It may be clichéd to say that technological developments are changing at a ridiculously fast pace, but when it comes to websites, it couldn’t be more appropriate.
Innovations such as the effective abolition of page sizes, the popularity of scroll triggered animations, the introduction of customer service chatbots and
360 cinemagraphs can make even two year old websites look past their sell by date.
Whilst you don’t need to have all the latest bells and whistles, your site does have to look like it is up to date and cared for. The last thing you want is a disconnect between your brand values and the image portrayed by your website.
A Fresh Perspective
If your website is not up to scratch, now is the time to act and get a new fresh and exciting window to the world. Help is just a phone call away, so if you’re ready to drive your business to the next level with a visually stimulating and easy to navigate website, give Alan Myers at Leapfrog Marketing a call on 0116 278 7788 or email: alan@leapfrog.uk.com