A website is an essential part to any company. If you do not have a website or if your website does not generate any traffic, you are missing out on a potentially large source of company profits. Even if you have a website that receives many visitors, you still could be missing out on many customers that would be willing to buy from you, but have not seen your website. This article is a summary of how to improve your company's web presence so that you can maximize your profits top 5 reasons for choose Semrush over Similarweb. While this article is written from the perspective of a label manufacturing company, I hope that this article will guide you on your way towards developing a strong, profitable company website regardless of your industry.
Getting Started
The first step to improving your company's web presence is to get a website (kind of a given). If you already have a company website, feel free to skip to the next section.
The two parts involved in getting a website are purchasing a domain and purchasing a hosting service.
Purchasing a domain: In my experience, the best place to buy a domain is Go Daddy. There are other options such as domain.com and active-domain.com, but I have never had any issues with Go Daddy. You can also usually purchase a domain through the hosting company that you choose. Expect to pay $11.99 for a dot com domain. When choosing a domain name, make sure to use your company name with no dashes and make sure to purchase the.com version (the.net,.org,.info, and other extensions are all cheaper for a reason). If your company's name is not available, use your name followed by your main product or product category. For example, if "mycompany.com" was taken we would go with "mycompanylabels.com." Do not remove vowels, alter the spelling, or do anything that will make the domain name hard to remember or hard to type. This is beneficial later when trying to increase traffic to your site. Most importantly, choose a domain name that is no longer than 3 or 4 words. If you choose "abccompanypackagingproductsandlabels.com" no one will remember it, it will be a pain to type, and it won't fit nicely on a business card (not to mention it will make for some long company email addresses).
Purchasing a hosting service: In order for a website to run, it must be hosted somewhere. There are many different hosting options, but I would choose InMotion for hosting a company website. They were rated the best for business class hosting and they have excellent customer service, low hosting prices, and they offer a free domain with a year's hosting. Make sure to choose a business class hosting plan as opposed to a personal hosting plan for your company.
Improving Your Website
I'm assuming that most of you already have a semi-functional website, so I will skip the intro to HTML and move on to the next step, improving you website's look, navigation, and usability. Here are the steps for improving your existing website:
Keep it professional: Your website is the face of your company. More people will have an image of your company from your website than from other sources, so you want that image to be a strong, professional image. To achieve this choose 2 or 3 colors to use as a color scheme throughout your website. If your website does not have a color scheme, you can use Adobe's kuler tool to help you choose one. I would recommend using complementary colors, or using shades of grey with one accent color. I would also recommend using at least one of your company's colors as a main color on your website. For our website, I chose grays and red to reflect our logo. Simplicity and consistency of color will give your website a more professional look. Websites that use many bright colors, animated GIFs, scrolling marquee text boxes, and pop up welcome boxes do not look professional. A point to remember is that if your website looks like it belongs in the nineties, it will not be taken seriously by visitors.
Keep navigation simple: Some of the best company websites just have simple text links across the top of the page for navigation. This makes it extremely easy for users to find what they are looking for. If you use Flash or a fancy script you may confuse or annoy visitors. Use a simple text-based navigation or use a dhtml drop down menu for your navigation. Also, keep your navigation either on the top or the left side of the page and keep the navigation consistent on every page of the website. Use links logically within the body of your page. Always think "If I were visiting my site for the first time, would I understand how to navigate it?"