Small Business Website Marketing

Oct. 6, 2013 - PRLog -- Many people and small businesses have a website but they may not have a clue how to market it and profit from their website.  This article will discuss ten (10) small business website marketing techniques to help you promote your business, product or service better.

10 Small Business Website Marketing Techniques

Review website navigation
Create transferable form
Minimize/eliminate pop-up ads
Frequently update information
Add a search function
Use free resources
Watch website background colors
Enhance the About Us page
Check for broken links
Utilize social engagement

You want to first review your website’s navigation so you can see how easy it is to maneuver around your website.  Make sure you are using simple intuitive menus for your customers.  If your website’s navigation is difficult to understand and move around in, then you are losing customers.  When people come to a website they want to know exactly what to do and not guess about where to find things.  If you are not sure how best to set up your website’s navigation, do a search for the top visited websites and look at their main page and how to navigate throughout their site.

If you have a website that requires people to input their information for access to material, newsletters or other resources multiple times make sure to create a transferable form.  This is useful when people have to register for an account and then have to enter the same information to obtain other items or information on your website.  If people need to repeat the same information multiple times they are less likely to register or utilize your sites benefits.

Most people do not like pop-up ads when coming to a site or navigating through a site.  You want to make sure to minimize these occurrences or if at all possible eliminate them all together.  Many people will close a website that brings pop-ups as soon as they can, even the big sites.  So try to stay away from those irritating ads and your customers will come back again.  If your webhost places their own popup ads on your website see if you can have these taken down or you probably need to search for another host.

One way to have customers return to your website is to frequently update information on the site.  When people come to your site and look at the information and perceive it as valuable they are more likely to return if this information is constantly updated.  If you have a website that is not particularly suited for updating information on a regular basis, create a blog to augment the information presented on your site.  Blogs are a great way to inform your readers on updates about your business, product or service.  If you do not have a blog and want to create one visit my post Home Based Business Blog (http://www.themogulmindset.com/home-based-business-blog/).

Your website should have a search function positioned in a visible location on the home page.  This will allow customers to search for specific information that may not be on your home page.  Search functions are widely used by the big websites and you should begin this practice as well.  As you build your web presence you will most likely accumulate additional pages, articles, blog post, and other information that will become too cluttered to place on the home page.

For those people that are looking to create a website but think they have to pay to have their website built, you can use some free resources to build your site.  Many people falsely believe that they need to purchase expensive software in order to create a good website.  There are several websites that can create a quality free site, such as www.wix.com and www.wordpress.com for bloggers.

Watch your website’s background color.  Too often people use a variety of colors and images that distract from the information displayed on their website.  White backgrounds make text copy easily readable by your customers and gives off a clean professional look.  Many people think a white background is boring, but remember the intent of most websites is to communicate with your audience and when they have a hard time deciphering the content you are losing them.

The “About Us” page is one of the most important pages on your website.  After the main page this is one of the most frequented pages on your site.  New visitors to your site will want to know more about you, your company and your product or service.  So make sure this page accurately represents your brand and provides the reader with good picture of who you are.  Many websites that I see will have boring pages and do not spend the time to tell the story of the company and entice people to want to look around the other pages of their site.  Give people a summary of who you are and your company so they can relate to you and feel more comfortable doing business with you.

Make sure you check for any broken links on your website.  Far too often I see websites that have pages that are not working properly.  This is most often caused by a broken link that has not been updates.  Every time you make changes to your site make sure to check that all your links are working.  The right time to do this check is well before you upload a page and take it live or when you are making major changes to the website.  This is critical, since visitors may not return to your site if certain page or links are not working properly.

Social engagement has become a critical aspect of website and small business marketing.  Today if you are not utilizing social media you are losing out on a large portion of customers that can increase your revenue and popularity.  Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, just to name a few, have more visitors per day than any one website can handle.  Marketing to these sites is a great idea and the growth potential is limitless.  If you are not sure how to get started with social media marketing visit my blog site article entitled, Small Business Marketing Ideas – Social Media Marketing (http://www.themogulmindset.com/small-business-marketing-i...).

Now that you have a better idea of how to market your small business website, you should feel more comfortable about getting started.  Don’t worry if you make mistakes, we all do, and we learn from them.  Continue to seek out additional knowledge and your confidence will grow and your marketing expertise will improve.  My Build Your Business (http://www.themogulmindset.com/how-to-build-your-business/) section also offers a list of resources to help you market your offline or online small business.

http://youtu.be/9TbA3hCa5r8