Your Website is More Than Your Online Business Card or Billboard

It is the Entrance to Your Business

If you are going to have a website, and you must, you need to have a good website. You also need to consider getting help maintaining WordPress websites that you may have in the future.

Cities and towns are competing to attract retailers, restaurants and companies. These companies will look at your community online prior to talking with anyone in your community.

Just as a potential customer arrives at a building, walks into the lobby and is greeted (or not) by someone at the front desk, so too does your potential prospect arrive at your website, enter and is greeted (or not) by a pleasant, courteous, informative, easy to navigate and understand home page.

First impressions matter and are hard to overcome if the impression made is not good.

“A recent study found that the average human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000 (or around the time smartphones hit the scene) to eight seconds today. In comparison, scientists believe that the goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds.” (Digital Information World)

So you have a very short period of time to grab that prospect and keep them on your site long enough for them to get the message you want to send. After that, you want them to feel they can find out the answers to their questions, solve their problems or fulfill a need easily.

Your website should be about what your customer/prospect needs and wants.

Consider how you would answer the following questions:

• Does your site look modern or do you have an old fashioned static site?
• Do your pages look designed or do they look like Word documents or PDFs?
• Can a prospect find quickly and easily where exactly you are located on a useful map?
• Do you have images that tell the story of your community?
  • What does your downtown or commercial corridor look like?
  • Do you have an industrial park?
  • Do you have signature events that make your community unique?
• Do you have demographic and market information on your site?
• Do you have the names of other companies located in your community?
  • Companies like the synergy created by other companies.
  • They will also most likely want to talk with other companies located in your community.
• Can a company easily find out how you help businesses locate in your community?
• Are your menu items accurate?
  • Is About Us really about your community?

Your community information needs to be accurate, useful and up to date.

We have all walked into an office and found:

• No one was there to answer questions
• Someone was there but it took a lot of time to get their attention
• Even when the attention was obtained, the person seemed not interested, not knowledgeable or distracted
• We are given the wrong information or no information

Good customer service is vital to attracting companies to your community. Websites are part of that service. Remember, your website is often the first introduction to your community. For more on business handling you should read this new guide on how to treat your employees well.

Does your website make you look as good as you want to look? If the answer is no, just as you would want to replace a broken window on your office or repair a damaged sign, get some advice and fix it.