Website & IT - SME Marketing

The Importance of the Internet

These days one of the first contacts a potential customer or advocate will have with a business is through its website. It is therefore more important than ever that a website is not only of high quality but that it is constantly evolving to keep in tune with ever changing web trends – such as the rise of video or blogs on the net. Important things to consider are: its design, whether it reflects a company’s brand, whether it is fit for purpose and, most importantly of all, whether its target audience finds the site when they search the web.

The design of a website needs to reflect a company’s brand and values. For instance, the New Covent Garden Food company’s website emphasises its passion for fresh ingredients and healthy food by using pastel colours associated with nature and having scrolls of pictures of the food products available.

As well design, a site’s usability is crucial. Recent surveys have shown that over 80% of internet users are likely to leave a website if they have to take too many clicks to find the information they are looking for. Therefore, no matter how big or small a business is it must ensure that information is easily accessible and that there are obvious links to the relevant pages.

With studies suggesting that 87% of all UK searches go though Google, it is essential to make sure that a company’s website can be found by people who might be potential customers. New Covent Garden Food, for example, may wish to attract people to its site who are looking for advice on fresh ingredients or soup recipes in the hope that once there, they may find out more about its products or buy a recipe book.

People use search engines to guide them so being on the front page of a relevant search term can be the difference between success and failure for a business. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can be used to help with this and should be an ongoing process. While an SEO company can help you, there are some simple things you can do yourself to enhance your search position, such as:

• making sure that the website name is easy to identify
• putting all your press releases and news on the website
• thinking about the terms you use in your website and try to use ones that customers might search for
• seeing if partner organisations would be willing to have reciprocal links from their website to yours