Do you have a template website, an outdated CMS or a static website you struggle to get a return on your investment? The Wordpress CMS (Content Management System) allows for the most ownership from the proprietor to make it meet their business goals. Let’s face it, no one knows your business better than you do. All you need are the tools to drive leads to your website, or better yet straight to your front door.

Responsive Web Design

An updated responsive web design should be your main support for all your marketing efforts. In most cases, it is the face, and the first thing a new customer sees before visiting or contacting you. If you don’t WOW them, chances are they’ll move on to your competitor that has a website full of relevant information and simplistic design to convert those leads into customers.

The transitional period of advertising is revolutionizing how customers are found with digital marketing. It's the inbound vs outbound marketing. The difference now is; they find your relevant content, trustworthiness thru reviews and just as important is your brand recognition. Another vital difference in driving sales traffic to your email box is the availability of analytics in the digital realm. Website data such as the number of visits, length of time on site, but most importantly each sale can be traced back to its originator enabling the business owner to actually drive the traffic by concentrating on what is working and improving what is not. Read more here about Inbound Marketing.

Many times a website rebuild allows for the new search technology such as meta-tags, blogging, etc which all help in improving results. Each is named a “Marketing Channel.” Channels are Social Media Management, Organic Search, Paid Search, Direct Traffic, Referrals, Email marketing, etc. The redesign should include the top performing pages on the current site. The consideration of performing keywords as well as the number of performing inbound links is a must.

Take advantage of the website technology that grades your website. This will tell you where your strengths are and will also identify your opportunities for improvement. An excellent website to consider is www.inbound.org. Review your website as well as your competition. Do not plagiarize but look for those that you like and those that do not appeal to you.

Unique Value Proposition

If you haven’t done so, you need to define your unique value proposition (UVP). It is imperative that you capture your qualified lead once they land on your page. This means you need to quickly communicate your value to the potential customer and then point them in the direction that results in a win/win for both.

An example would be something like “Red Shark Digital aims to help businesses improve the performance of their digital presence, and most importantly convert those leads to customers.”

Another way to improve your website is to identify the type of person that you believe will be seeking your service or product. These definitions are called personas. Immediately you can do this by analyzing your existing customer base that will attract them to take the next step. What Social sites do they visit? What do they search for? How can your product/service help them?

Optimization

Optimization. Have you heard this word? “To make more efficient.” It is of great importance that you understand the keywords and phrases that define your niche. Through analytics you can see which page is viewed the most, thus enabling you to “optimize” that page to drive leads, downloads, sales or all three.

Now that we have them on your website, we now must drive them to “call to action.” There are many ways to bring this to fruition. e-books, e-newsletters, free trials, demonstration, etc are just a few ways to identify a qualified lead. While redoing the website make sure there are plenty of “call-to-action” pages that will direct them at the time in which they are seeking guidance.

Some of the best advice we can give you it to start a blog. Blogs are indexed and once a search criteria is requested your product or service are more likely to be found. Include recent articles, news of interest, etc. to make your blogs interesting.

Most web pages will have a home, about us, our products, contact, etc but it is critical to include many of the extras mentioned above. Blogs, call-to-action landing pages, RSS subscriptions, social media, and most importantly analytics are a few extras that need to be a part of your marketing strategy.

In summary, your updated site should be clean, simple, responsive and pleasing but how the website functions and converts leads into customers is the most important aspect of the site for its owner.

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