With search engine visibility and competitive pricing even the smallest and most specialist online business can generate much more substantial ROI than they could ever hope to offline. However, before a potential customer will engage with your website, they will need to be reassured that it is reputable, that they will receive any goods or services purchased and that their information is secure.
There is an old adage that you never have a second chance to make a first impression and if the user does not trust your website from the outset, they have plenty of other options. Of course any web presence starts with a domain, you may have what you regard as the perfect domain name, but as Namesco advise customers, this is just the first step in developing a professional and fully rounded web presence to grow your business. You will need to build your business's online credibility to nurture your investment, so here's a simple guide to thinking bigger once you've registered your domain name:
1. Make sure you aren't brand-jacked: Before you even build your site you should make sure you own all of the online property that relates to your brand. This will help minimise the opportunities for any other web users to impact negatively upon your business, for example by stealing your traffic or by defaming your brand. Start by securing relevant regional (.co.uk), global (.com) and business (.biz) extensions and link these back to your main address. It's also worth considering buying up domain names for your core brand(s), as well as close misspellings to direct traffic back to your site - talk to your provider who will have trained domain specialists who can help and advise you. Finally, claim relevant branded spaces on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to ensure that these are not cyber-squatted.
2.Guarantee up-time: A good commercial hosting solution will ensure your site is always running. This is an important consideration because a crashed site can mean lost revenue, potential customers and credibility. Therefore investing in reliable hosting is a key priority, it is also very important to make sure that this is scalable to support your business as it grows.
3. Demonstrate your business is legitimate: If you're planning to process payments online, the payment provider will use their own SSL certificate but you should also invest in your own SSL certificate if you are collecting personal information. You can apply to initiatives such as SafeBuy and Trusted Shops to show that your site meets consumer security and protection criteria in order to further build trust. It is also advisable to set up a bespoke corporate email address to mark out your business is genuine - using a webmail address will likely set potential customers' alarm bells ringing.
4. Get the look, feel and functio nality right: If your website doesn't look professional or offer the level of performance that consumers have become accustomed to, then they simply won't trust it. Therefore it is imperative to make your site as user-friendly and as simple to navigate as possible, you need to incorporate an accurate search function and ensure customers are able to browse categories in a logical manner. Above all, websites are primarily a visual medium so you need to be able to show users what they are looking for at all times. Of course, designing and user-testing a commercial website can be an extremely challenging and expensive endeavour. Packages, such as Namesco's Ecommerce, offer a simple framework for those with no web design or coding experience to build a fully functional online business with a minimum of fuss.
5. Make your business visible: You website may be successfully up and running, but unless potential customers can find it, you won't make any sales. In the most brutal terms, unless your site features near the top of the first page of Google results, it might as well not exist. You will need to invest time and money into Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) something like Namesco's Hypersubmit product which can help your site get indexed in popular search engines. Over and above your SEO efforts, you need to talk directly to your target audience and the more specialist your business is, the easier this will be. By this point you should have secured a social media presence and you can invest time into integrating social feeds and functionality into your site to find and engage with influencers. Simply pushing offers over social media channels isn't enough; you need to join conversations, blog and micro-blog to instigate a two-way dialogue with your audience to discover how you can best meet their needs. In time, happy customers become brand advocates and start to generate buzz around your business. Once you have a satisfactory user database then you can start exploring other avenues, such as opt-in newsletters and affiliate marketing, to drive sales and expand your customer base.
Of course, there is no magic bullet, putting your business online takes a lot of time and effort and your website is unlikely find immediate success. The online sector is incredibly competitive and each year thousands of SMBs fall by the wayside, but you have to think big to succeed and the rewards can be well worth it. So before you jump in, consider what elements you need to integrate to put your brand in front of the maximum number of potential customers and once it's operational, consider how you will message it to give your brand a consistent identity that users will respond to.
By Chirag Patel, UK Country Manager, Namesco
