Your Website is More Than Just a Website
By Carrie Cousins
Thank you to Valley Business FRONT for featuring our Vice President, Carrie Cousins, in their October 2024 issue.
A website is an investment in your brand and business.
It’s like having a solid fleet of vehicles wrapped in your colors and logo or a beautifully designed storefront with products begging to be bought.
The commonality in each of these investments is that they are a direct reflection of your business and brand. The thing that is different about each of these things is that the first of the three – the website – is often neglected and left in ill-repair.
Often that results in an emergency situation – the website goes down, it gets hacked, features stop working, or you just can’t work on it anymore.
You wouldn’t let your vehicles or storefront get in this condition, so why your website?
Your website is one of the most used and public brand elements you own. Many customers and potential customers will visit it to establish your credibility and legitimacy without you ever knowing they were there. From that initial visit, they make a choice as to whether to do business with you or not.
What do you want them to see? What kind of online customer experience will you create?
The right website choices are different for every business, but there are a few elements that stay the same. Here’s a little checklist to help you stay on track:
- Start with a website that is yours. That includes a domain that you own and dedicated hosting for your website. (Yes, an agency can manage this for you, but you should be the owner of it all.)
- Build on a platform and tool that is highly regarded, as customizable as you need, and is fast and search[1]engine friendly. (This can be a tall order, but generally, WordPress or Shopify fit the bill.)
- Regularly maintain the website once it is complete. (Again, having an agency or dedicated web person here makes this run a lot smoother. They will likely work on updates and fixes in a development environment, test everything to make sure it works, and then push those updates to the live website for a seamless customer experience with no downtime.)
- Create and update content on a schedule. (A website is only as good as you make it. If your latest blog post is from three years ago, it has almost zero value to a customer looking at it today.)
- Develop a plan to rebuild and refresh every three to four years. (That might seem like a quick turnaround but think of the speed at which everything online is changing. With rapid changes in technology and user preferences, devices, and how they interact online, companies that don’t stay aligned with tech will fall behind.)
Your website is an extension of your brand. It should look, feel, and function in a manner that mimics your brick-and-mortar store. It should also stand alone as a tool to help generate leads and sales.
And if you think no one is looking, you might be surprised. Your business is judged every single day by the quality, professionalism, and brand you portray online. Make every visit count.
Carrie Cousins is the Vice President at LeadPoint Digital in Roanoke. For 15+ years, she has helped businesses tell their stories and get better results online with practical digital marketing strategies. She is also an active leader in AAF, serving on the local and district boards, and is an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech.
