Websites for new businesses

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Congratulations you have a new business! Now you need a website to get more customers.  Here are our top tips for new UK businesses about websites and what your website should and shouldn't do.

Get a professional website. Don't be cheap!  Of course you could get a free site at first, just to experiment. But people might not take you seriously if you have a website hosted for free and covered with banner ads.  Owning your own domain name adds credibility to your site, and Mile High Media can help you buy a domain name at a bargain price, so do that as soon as you feel ready.

Get a really fast-loading website from which to sell your products. You don’t have long to catch a potential customers interest, so choose a website that is fast loading and interesting. All Mile High Media websites are designed to be fast, search engine friendly and powerful.

Don’t fill the webpages with a ton of waffle. Give the most important information. What can the person get from using the product or service? Why is the product exactly what the person needs? What is the price etc? Give people a way to pay immediately, in case they REALLY like what they see, there and then.

If you have a LOT of information, give them a link to a "more info" page, perhaps with photos and payment options. Get an autoresponder where people can sign up for your Email Newsletters for notices on future products. Give them an incentive in exchange for their name and email address.

Build your contact list honestly! No "leads" buy from uncertain sources, so don't "harvesting" email addresses, or bug friends and family to sign up. Once you have built up a list of subscribers you need to keep in touch with your contacts regularly.

Why not send your contacts an email asking for a little more information? Maybe a poll on what type of things they’re most interested in? If you know what your contacts are looking for, then you have something to work with. You can find whatever they need, test it out, and when you’re happy with it, say "Hey, I found something I think you may like!"

Narrow your focus. Don’t try to be "everything" to "everyone", you’ll just end up spreading yourself out way too thin. Find what works for you, what excites you, and work from there. Yes, I said "excites". We all need a bit of excitement in life, right? So why not work with something you’re excited about? If and when it stops working for you, drop it and move on.

Improve your website's usability. The ease with which visitors are able to use a Web site is very important,especially if you’re trying to market something from the site. Usability is very much about how quickly and easily visitors are able to move around the site and not just about making sure everything on the site works.

The need for your website to be easily navigated is enormous. Messy, disruptive and confusing sites are a huge turn off to potential customers. In other words: if you’re looking to make sales, make sure your website is easy to navigate so as not to chase off visitors at first sight. Navigation (links for moving around the site)is extremely important if you want your visitors to look at more than just your main page. If navigation choices are unclear, most visitors will just hit the "Close" button, never to be seen again.

As a rule of thumb, the main navigation is usually placed in the top 1/3 of the web page or on the left hand column, and the secondary navigation tends to be placed within the bottom 2/3 of the page, or on the right hand column. Of course, this is entirely your choice, because, as with all rules, there ARE exceptions ;~)

Build a website yourself or hire a professional webdesign team? If you want to build your website on your own from scratch, I highly recommend getting some free webspace and installing a CMS like Joomla or Wordpress.  Web-design is actually quite easy, but getting the website just right can take a lot of time.  In a new business you can't afford to waste time messing around fixing bugs when you could be better off getting a proper website built right the first time. Also be careful of hidden costs like web-hosting, templates, customisation, graphic design, analytics and ongoing SEO work.  There's quite a lot of extra work involved in running a website. Also keep in mind that to be taken seriously, you really will need to get your own domain and proper hosting for your site at some point in time.

For more information about powerful websites for small and medium size businesses please visit http://milehighmedia.co.uk.

Blog - Web-design