Navigating our “new normal” not just in our personal lives, but professionally has become a serious hit-and-miss event in many respects. Businesses have had to completely redesign business models, and while these may have presented something of a challenge when we first realized we had to evolve in order to survive, the law of unintended consequences has meant that for most businesses – it has been something of a blessing.

Here’s why. Long established and traditional business practices, many of which had been long overdue for an overhaul, have had to through no choice of the business owner, catch up with and interact with the online and digital environment.

What this has meant for many businesses, is access to new markets, evolved business processes, and in some cases, even new and evolved product lines. So, with all of this exciting energy around, for businesses in the services industry as well as FMCG and catering, the primary means of interaction with many of their customers has shifted from traditional storefronts or restaurants to the internet – more specifically, websites. This extends to social media usage for marketing sales generation as well.

That means, that if this idea of online business applies to your business (and we’re pretty confident that it does), your website simply has to be super-functional on every level, and if potential customers that are interacting with your website on some level, are not able to convert that interaction into sales – you’re doing something wrong. But, if clients are not even finding your website, well – the party is over before it’s even started.

We’re going to look at two important ideas that determine significant outcomes for both of these scenarios, namely how your website should be operating, and how to drive traffic to your website in the first place.

How Should Your Website Be Operating?

There isn’t one single answer to this question or any one way in which you achieve this. Rather, there is a collection of actions and processes that you should be following that creates a highly successful website. Now, how you arrive there isn’t cast in stone and any one of these elements can be achieved at different points in your web design.

While you’re working through the process to figure out which step goes “where” and “when”, (and often this is learned at various points of your general business operation), you’ll also learn heaps about how the business environment is working around you. This, in turn, gives you the opportunity to tweak your website, continually giving you a real-time and ongoing digital operation that works.

• Get your homepage message down: Consumers make decisions about purchasing within milliseconds, so whatever it is that your business does or supplies and how you mean to convert the person browsing from a browser into a customer, has to be smartly contained within the data of your homepage.
• Be contactable: One of the biggest, simplest mistakes that web designers make is not putting the contact details of the website owner, everywhere on the website. On the home page, on the contact us page, and on every other tab on your site.
• Navigable design: Easy, fast, and simple.
• Optimal SEO: You absolutely must have the right SEO solutions SEO algorithms are changing and evolving all the time and you want to be as highly ranked as possible.

Even if you’re a small business competition is king and effective competing is the emperor.

How Do You Drive Traffic to Your Website?

Driving traffic to your website has a list of requirements, some of which can tie in with the operational side of your website too.  For example, ensuring that you have adequate use of keywords associated with your product or service. When potential customers type these keywords into the search bar on Google, for example, the Google algorithm searches for websites with those keywords.

It should go without saying, but you also have to ensure that your digital marketing team (and that may well just be you), regularly creates memorable, thought-provoking, and relevant content, and that content should contain a call to action wherever possible.

Website developers and maintenance teams must also remember to keep social media pages active and in synergy with each other. Also using the correct keywords that can interact with the main site – from here, consumers will find all the necessary information they need to navigate over to the online store, or sales platform.

Technology can make all the difference for your business, and that is motivation on its own to get it done properly.

A website that operates effectively, efficiently and provides your customers with all the information they need to make an informed decision about your product or service is now, your first line of defense and if it’s done properly – may be the only one need.