I often ask people, do your sales people sleep at night and take breaks for lunch during the day?... They look at me like I’m strange or something, but then my point is made! People realise that, when designed properly, a website works for you twenty-four hours a day, doesn’t take sick leave and proudly sells your business and handles support enquiries from your customers wherever they are, at any time of the day or night.

Give your website the attention it deserves
Just like sales teams require training, websites require attention too! In order to keep your customers interested, they need to have up-to-the-minute information to remain effective. You’ve spent all that money marketing your website, now you need to make sure you don’t mislead people with poorly structured, old and boring content. The last thing you want is for this update process to take time, in fact, it is vital that you have the flexibility to control and change the content of your web pages when you want, not when your web design company gets around to it.

By providing a service where customers can DIY their content, website companies are getting wise to a real competitive edge. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realise the web design company that can provide quick and easy-to-use web content management systems will have an edge over those who can only see this as a threat.

You should have the power to choose
Web site companies should provide their customers with two choices. Concentrate on providing customers with the best tools to make changes easily, quickly and when they want while also giving customers the flexibility to continue to receive a service for updating their site (for those not quite so urgent updates). Giving customers more choice and more control very rarely fails.

Relevant information is the key to success online
When it comes to potential customers searching for your products and services, we should all understand that on the web CONTENT IS KING. Without great, well thought out content customers can’t and won’t find your website and will never do business with you. Search engines require great content to be able to find your website. A content management system bridges this problem. Otherwise your website investment is wasted!

You should now find and start using a content management tool to place in fantastic content that is kept up to date and fresh. Now you can start putting your website on the map.

November 2006

By Rob Williams