Ok You’ve Got Yourself A New Website, Now What?

by: Craig Bucknall

Many businesses spend lots of money setting up a new website what with Domain Name Registration, Website Hosting and most importantly the Website Design; some customers can be out of pocket thousands of dollars.

The role of the website designer is to construct an eye catching and appealing website backed by good programming and W3C compliance. If your designer is any good, they would hopefully construct your site pages with Search Engine Optimisation in mind even in cases where it hasn’t been explicitly applied for. In other words instead of naming your Company Information page file as ‘about.htm’ being a little more creative with SEO in mind and name it ‘business_lawyers_sydney.htm’ for a Business Law Firm in Sydney, therefore capturing keywords in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPS).

Anyway getting back to our topic, you have spent hours compiling information and images for your new site and your designer has pieced together the puzzle and you now have a brand new website online and raring to go…..now what!

Many businesses wrongly presume that once their website is online they can sit back and watch the dollars and clients roll in as they are now ‘online’. Well let me tell you it isn’t that simple (we all wish it was!), but the truth be told this world wide web of ours is truly that WORLD WIDE and with millions of websites all competing for your clients hard earned dollars you need to make sure your website is seen and visited by as many as possible.

Don’t panic, this task may be easier than it seems with only a few easy to apply changes to your current business practices you can make your site a popular spot for web surfers which will lead to future business prospects and customers and their all important dollar.

Domain Email

I am surprised by the number of businesses still using a hotmail, gmail or aol free email account for the main business email contact. You’ve paid for a new domain name and hosting for your business why not put it to good use and create a email address for that domain.

Plenty of my customers don’t want to part with their @free_email as ‘everyone knows my email address’. Well heres a tip, people are smart and if you tell them you have a new email address and only use that new email account to send emails etc, they will start using it to reply to your messages too. I’m not saying get rid of your @free_email account all together but to use your new domain email as the primary contact for all outgoing correspondence.

What’s the difference I hear you ask, well those people that don’t know about your website or maybe even your business, will have an easier time finding your site when your domain name appears after the @ symbol. You’ll be surprised the amount of times emails are received and the first thing someone wants to do is check out your site for more information, well here’s one way which will help.

Email Signatures

You know the ones, those easily programmed options in Email programs which add your name and phone number at the bottom of the page for every new, replied or forwarded email. Well how about adding your website URL Address to this signature as well, that way every email sent will be advertising your website address.

Email Blast

By now you would certainly have amassed a large contact list of customers and associates, so why not notify them of your new website and ask them to comment on its design and ease of use, you never know you may actually get some more business or sales just from this simple email.

Business Cards

You must hand out 100’s of these little cardboard cards every time you meet a new business associate or prospective client so why not add your website URL Address here as well. I can’t tell you the number of cards I have received which don’t feature the business website; it seems criminal that there is such an omission.

Signage

Be it moving or stationary, signage advertising your business is paramount to getting your name, brand or logo out into the public consciousness. So why not add your website to your current signage or even on the rear window of your car, truck or van and become a moving billboard.

Competitions

Think about running regular competitions on your website where visitors must find certain information contained ‘somewhere’ within your site. Using letter drops, print media or email blasts, ask your customers and associates to enter and forward the email onto their friends so they can enter as well and offer a prize worthy of peoples time while visiting your site.

For Example: Your site may be selling Ladies Fashions and the competition stipulates that visitors must find and name three brands of clothing available to enter the competition, thus ensuring those who visit will be aware of your product line and may even purchase someone if they like the range.

RSS Feeds

Are you prepared to write articles on your specialised service and products? Well if you answered yes then you should consider implementing an RSS Feed into your website. RSS or Really Simple Syndication allows you to publish relevant information to the WWW community. With dozens of News Aggregators around ready to pick up new feeds, your information and website URL will be published on numerous sites adding to its popularity with Search Engines and your customers.

News Updates

Websites can quickly become stale and tired when nothing changes, so along with your RSS Feeds why not establish a news information page with headlines on your home page to constantly update your customers with latest happenings.

Newsletters

You can create a simple HTML newsletter based on any Word Processing document which will look attractive to your customers and encourage them to click through to your website. You can easily paste this into an email editor and send to your customers and encourage them to forward or pass on the email to their contacts etc.

If you apply at least 1 of these rules you should be able to increase the popularity of your site almost immediately. Don’t forget that site promotion and popularity is an ongoing task to keep your website in your viewer’s consciousness, so if updating via a Newsletter works well, make a note to produce it monthly.

About The Author

Craig Bucknall is the owner and Managing Director of the Sydney based Website Design studio Bullie Graphics. See their website for more information about website design at http://www.bulliegraphics.com.au also checkout the http://www.bulliegraphics.com.au/blog website design and seo tips blog.