Website Management System
Answers by
Viadesto
"sites need to gather information as well as give information, otherwise you are just putting your brochure online and the time/money you spend on a website is not beign well spent." - Viadesto
Website Management Q&A
How do I set myself apart from others on the Web?
In reality, you are actually the best one to answer that question. Ask the question again by leaving out the final words: How do I set myself apart from others? There is something totally unique about You (yourself, your staff, your customers, etc) and your product and/or services. There may be others that are similar, and at firs look seem identical, but there truly is something that YOU offer that nobody else on the planet offers, simply because there's no one else on the planet like you. Ask your employees. Ask your customers. This is an excellent question to dwell in and as your unique qualities become more apparent, have that be a large focus of what you present on your website to represent what you have that nobody else has.
I'm just getting started on my new site, what content is most important to have on my site?
There are two parts to this answer.
Part 1 - Pertinent Information. You want to make sure that your website quickly AND easily answers all the top questions your customers, and potential customers, have. This can sometimes be much harder than it sounds. In order to find out the questions your customers have, do NOT ask your owner, or CEO or top management. They have their own ideas of what the customers "should" want to know, but in reality what the top level people in the organization think these should be are not necessarily what they actually are. To do this properly, interview the people in the organization that have the most interactions with customers. The people who greet those who walk through the door and the ones that answer incoming calls are the ones that can best give you this information. Ask several of those people what the top 10-12 questions customers have and then make sure your website answers these quickly and easily. We are astounded by how many websites don't have an easy to find Contact Us link on the very first page!
Part 2 - Passion. Share what you are most passionate about! What has you do what you do? What sets you apart and makes what you have different from everyone else? What are you most PASSIONATE (and excited) about regarding your business and offerings? Passion is addictive and enrolling and the more you have on your site the better.
Why do I keep reading about the importance of an "interactive" website?
The days of simply having a "brochure" online as your website are long gone. Television, newspapers and magazines are entities that offer a one-way medium where information is simply given to you, but the magic of the Internet is within its interactive nature. You want to take full advantage of this! If you have a site that just has your company brochure online, you are missing some great opportunities to gain new business and portray yourself as a leader in your industry. An interactive site will allow you to not only give information, but to collect it as well. Online Forms are key to get the information you want from your site visitors. Here are some key examples of other interactive features you'll want to be abvle to have for your site.
You want to be able to give your site visitors the ability to:
- sign up for a newsletter
- request more information, or support
-
register for an online, or in person, demonstration
- subscribe to RSS feeds from your site to proactively be informed of new content
- sign up for upcoming classes or trainings
- to comment on your site's content
These are just a few examples, but there are many more when you think about it. Bottom line is that you want your site to be interactive and a two way medium for information between you and your customers, employees, management, etc.
Why is it important to keep updating my site? Once I have it "just right" why can't I leave it that way?
Everything in business is changing. Sometimes it may feel like you are doing the same thing over and over, but if you are a successful business you are always looking for ways to improve how you do things. Do you ever feel in your business that you have it "just right" and then sit back and let it be? Probably not, there is always the yearning for evolving and improving upon what you've already built for your business. Your website should reflect this same intention and experience of change. Studies show that if people come to your site and get their questions answered, and then they come back later- the amount of times they return to your site is DIRECTLY correlated to how much the site changes. If the site stays the same and there's nothing new for them there, then they simply stop coming back. Here's a tip: the changes don't all have to be content! For example, your Contact Us page is one of the pages on your site that gets the most traffic, but is also the least likely to change. Your address, phone numbers and e-mails don't change often at all. However, you can offer people an experience of change by posting different pictures on that page. You can post images of your latest conference, or the outside of your building with the leaves changing or congratulations to that new employee or customer. Not all change have to be content, you can change the images on your site on a regular basis and this can provide the necessary experience of change that drives repeat visitors to your site.
What are some other ways I can drive repeat traffic to my site?
There are quite a few listed in this FAQ already… making sure the content changes is a key one, but another aspect worth mentioning is PARTICIPATION. Create an online "club" of some kind where people can sign up and create themselves a "User Account" and then be offered access (free or paid) to parts of your site that only your online "club" members can access. There are many, many valuable offerings you can provide with an online club and once people have a username and password and access to sections of your site that the general public can't get to- you've got yourself an active repeat visitor that you'll have tons of opportunities to sell to and create a customer for life. Few aspects drive traffic to your site as much as PARTICIPATION!
What current trends do you see as valuable and worth looking at regarding websites and revenue generation?
The current trend that we like the most is the one where you offer VALUE on your site right away and for free- then offer them MORE for a cost. Offer a Blog or Newsletter or a valuable FAQ section where you can share immediate value with your customers. Give them information that you might normally want to charge for (because it provides value) but give it away for free. This has people feel like they got a "scoop" and now have information that they didn't before that can help them with whatever they are up to. This also puts you in the position of being an "expert" and someone who DOES have value to share/offer. Then once you enroll them in the fact that you do know what you are talking bout, and do have value to provide, then ask them to sign up for your newsletter, and/or paid sections of your site. Once you establish yourself as highly credible they are much more likely to want to spend money on your products/services. If what you offer is information, you can have sections of your site that have more in-depth information in which they can instantly pay for access to that information, which creates a great model for residual income.
What are the most important factors in choosing a website company or platform?
Here is what you are looking for in a website platform or company:
- DIY- a product where you can make the updates yourself, quickly and EASILY, without needing to contact an outside person/provider to do so (and get charged for each update). You MUST be able to update your site YOURSELF.
- Ease- updating your website should be as easy as updating a Word document! You should not need to know HTML or any other programming languages to update your site.
- Fees- you should be paying one flat monthly fee for your site, regardless of how many updates you make to the site. You should never have to pay for an update unless it's something that ONLY the website company has access to (like the basic template that the site sits on, or the look and feel of the backgrounds and fonts, etc). You should never have to pay extra for basic content updates!
- Interactive- sites need to gather information as well as give information, otherwise you are just putting your brochure online and the time/money you spend on a website is not beign well spent.
- Support- make sure you are happy with your support options and that your
- Experience- there are many companies out there doing what they do for a long time. Choose a company that's been in business for a while and has a proven track record of providing a quality product with excellent support.
- Intranets/Extranets- you have many different "audiences" for your business, here are a few of them:
- Customers (potential, current, past)
- Employees (potential, current)
- Board of Directors , or Top Management
- Vendors (potential, current)
- Partners (potential, current)
- Etc, etc
The point is that you have many different audiences to speak to, and for each you want a specific message. Your website should easily cater to all of these entities. The best websites are ones that have the ability to create an unlimited number of User Accounts such that these different groups can log in and get to a different section of your website that is SPECIFIC and UNIQUE to them!
Answers by Viadesto
CMS Content Management
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