HELP MAKE YOUR COMPANY’S WEBSITE AN EFFECTIVE MARKETING TOOL
Today’s economic times demand pragmatic spending. Businesses need to find innovative as well as practical solutions that help them continue attracting customers and maintaining awareness among their target audiences in the market place.
Your company website provides such a practical solution. With the tight budgets and limited resources in today’s business environment, organizations are forced to closely evaluate spending especially when it comes to marketing. A website, however, is a tool that all businesses can leverage to help increase brand exposure, expand their target market and help grow their business.
Today, India has over 81 million Internet users1and over 1.9 billion2 Internet users exist worldwide. By 2014, the bulk of the online population growth is expected to come from Asia, which will represent 44% of the online population3. Being a part of this ever-expanding digital world starts with your website.
Your website can be a cost-effective way to help promote your business to various target audiences and communicate your business strengths. Think of your website as a calling card or an elevator pitch. It can quickly and easily convey your company’s offerings, its strengths and allow interested visitors to buy your products or services. It helps position your business as efficient to consumers, competitive to potential investors, and it can serve as the first introduction to people you want to hire.
Like most things, building your website into an effective marketing tool starts with the basics. The site needs to be easy to use, branded to suit your company image and have customer service response systems in place.
The right domain name
A domain name represents your company’s brand and identity on the Internet. To help boost your recognizability on the Web, your domain name should be simple, easy to remember and something that people can associate with your company.
Selecting the right domain name helps increase your visibility on the net. A .com domain name is a good choice, since it is one of the most popular domain names on the Internet today4.
If the domain name you want for your company is already taken, you can search for similar words or names, an interesting tag line, a product or service name, or consider a “Hinglish” option. You can also use a domain name suggestion tool freely available on most .com registration sites.
You may also want to consider registering multiple domain names at this stage in order to increase the chances of your potential customers finding you online. These similar name domains can be possible misspelling and variations of your main domain name. These other domain names can be used to redirect your visitors to your main website.
Content is King
A key factor to a successful website is good content. This requires effective planning and presentation of information based on an understanding of your customers’ requirements. It is therefore prudent to determine your target audience and then build content that responds to their specific requirements vis-à-vis your business.
Clear website navigation
Good navigational design is an essential ingredient for any good website; navigation is the roadmap of your website. Visitors to your website need to know three essential things: where they are, where they can go, and how they can get back to where they came from.
Helping your customers find you
Helping people find your website on the Internet is also important. You should promote your domain name at every opportunity, from the business card to office supplies. This helps introduce your company to businesses who may not be familiar with what you do but have a need for your services and products.
In addition, you can register your domain name on one or more search engine websites, since many Internet users utilize these websites to search for companies and services. Besides registering the website, some technical adjustments are also important in your website development (“search engine optimization”), so that it responds better to the searches.
Listing your website for visibility
You can also agree with another website owner of a similar or related interest to list each other’s website links. To do so, locate websites that make a good match to your own and contact the owner to ask if they will link to your website in exchange for you linking to theirs. If you sell accessories on your website, for example, you can set up a link exchange with another website that sells apparel or shoes.
Having a .com domain name also helps to increase your visibility on the Internet. A .com domain is one of the most popular domain names on the Internet today4 and is by far the most likely extension most people try when searching for a website.
In today’s economic environment, businesses will be well-served to look at their company’s website as an effective marketing tool that helps to maintain consistent brand exposure, especially with limited resources.
Welcome to the Internet world!
1 www.internetworldstats.com, June 30, 2010
2 www.internetworldstats.com, June 30, 2010
3 Forrester research ‘Global Online Population Forecast, 2009 to 2014’ dated August 17, 2010 available at http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/global_online_population_forecast%2C_2009_to_2014/q/id/57427/t/2
4 During the fourth quarter of 2010, the overall base of .com and .net domain names grew to reach a combined total of 105.2 million names, according to the Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief (Volume 8, Issue 1, February 2011)