Why Your Website is No Longer Just a Tool – It’s the Hub of your Business
By Raeleen
| 13 April 2022
Your website is not just an online brochure or a place where visitors can find your contact information. It is the hub of your business and can help propel your enterprise to success. Learn how you can harness the full potential of your website in this post.
What Exactly is a Website and Why does it Matter?
A website is a collection of publicly accessible, interlinked web pages that is located under a single domain name.
Websites are created and maintained by companies, organisations, and individuals to serve various purposes like creating awareness about a company or organisation, selling products or services, pursuing advocacy and others.
Many types of websites exist such as the following.
Company Websites
A company website is the official online identity of a business. Primarily, it serves to increase brand recognition and provide general information about the company such as its background, contact information, and its products and/or services.
eCommerce Websites
An eCommerce website is a website that allows users to shop for products or services online. Users can browse products from the online catalogue, add them to a virtual shopping cart, and pay through a payment gateway.
Educational or eLearning Websites
Educational websites aim to provide information about certain subjects or facilitate learning. They may be established by schools, non-profit organisations, government offices, and businesses and could be in the form of one-way instruction, video courses, interactive classrooms online, drip-fed online courses or collections of information & worksheets.
Non-Profit Websites
Non-profit organisation websites primarily provide information about the organisation, its services and activities, partners, and donors. They also serve as an avenue for soliciting financial support or for volunteer recruitment.
Blogs
Blogs are home to a range of articles and opinion pieces about a particular topic. They can also be more like a news site with a range of articles about a variety of topics. A blog can also act as an online journal or diary, providing a record of activity or thoughts.
Why do websites matter?
A website is not just an online brochure or a place where visitors can find your contact information. It is a powerful online representation of your brand and is an essential factor in the success of your business.
With a website, you can do everything from one place: increase brand awareness and authority, sell directly to your customers online, do online coaching, communicate and get feedback with our audience, launch your marketing campaigns, manage your inventory, and more.
What are the Benefits of a Website
Here are the top ten ways a website can benefit your company.
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Boost your Brand Image
Your website reflects your brand. A well-designed website will be able to accurately show your target audience what your company stands for, and how you are different from your competitors. -
Earn Trust and Loyalty from your Target Audience
People won’t just part with their money to anyone especially online. You can use your website to build your credibility and earn the trust of your potential customers. Your website should provide complete information about your company and your products. Likewise, showing social proof such as trust seals/badges from third-party sites, testimonials and reviews from satisfied customers, endorsements from experts can help you build trust with your audience. -
Create More Opportunities for Income
A website can bring more income opportunities. If you already have a brick and mortar store, you can add another sales channel and earn more by turning your company website into an eCommerce site. If you are an author, you can sell your books through your website aside from the usual channels. If you are already selling physical or digital products on your site, you can add subscription-based products to get recurring revenue. -
Reach out to a Wider Audience
Your website is not limited to a geographical location which means you can reach a wider audience. If you are into eCommerce, you can sell to anyone, anywhere as long as your logistics allow it. -
24/7 Online Presence
A website allows your customers to discover you any time of the day, any day of the week. If you have an eCommerce website, your customers can transact with you 24/7. This is particularly important as “leads never sleep” in our modern day and age! -
Keep Track of your Business
Your website can help you keep track of your business through analytics. You can find out how much website traffic you get, where they come from, what their interests are, how they found your site, how long they stay, which of your products are most popular, and more. The data you have gathered from your website analytics can help you create better products and marketing campaigns to help your business grow more. -
Build a Great Relationship with your Customers
Your website provides an easy way for your customers to connect with you and learn more about your products/services and business. Likewise, you can reach out to your customers to get their feedback and provide product support when needed. -
Promote your Business More Effectively
You can use your website as a launching pad for effective marketing campaigns. When done right, these marketing campaigns can be more cost-effective than traditional means. -
Increase your Revenue
With great marketing and sales tools at your fingertips, you can potentially increase your revenue with the help of your website. A great website will allow you to automate many processes so that you can reduce internal costs. -
Build a Hub for your Business
Your website can serve as a powerful hub for your business. You can integrate many aspects of running your business into your website. Enhance your customer support via chat, email or built-in forms on your website. Manage your business more efficiently by integrating apps for inventory, orders, shipping, accounting, and customer relations. Boost your sales or conversion by integrating lead generation, email marketing, blogs, and social media on your website. You can do all these and more with your website.
How your Website can Help Your Business
In the previous section, we’ve discussed in general the benefits of having a website. Here, we’ll go into the details of how your website can help your business. The following are actual examples of how a well-designed website was able to help these companies achieve their business goals.
Carpet One Australia
Carpet One is an international cooperative specialising in flooring solutions with over 1700 retail stores worldwide.
The Australian Carpet One website was out of date and needed a redesign. It was also difficult to update and didn’t adequately communicate the large range of available flooring products. There was a need to improve the user experience for both the customers and the company.
Mettro delivered a fully content managed solution that enabled Carpet One’s head office to update the corporate website and the individual store sites as well as local product catalogue and pricing.
To improve the user experience of potential customers, Mettro did several things. First, we used close up photos of products at 100% of actual size to give the customers a better appreciation of the products.
Second, we included a product selector to help visitors narrow down their choices based on the application, their preferred attributes, price range, design style and so on.
Another thing we included is the quote calculator that enables the user to get the approximate price for their total purchase with the option to include underlay and installation so they can get a better idea of the cost.
In addition to the above, we focussed on coming up with a quality marketing strategy, improving web copy, and creating strong calls to action to help guide the user in their next step.
The result? The improvements on the website increased both the website and foot traffic in local stores.
Cornerstone Medical Recruitment
Cornerstone Medical Recruitment offers a personalised medical recruitment service. It aims to make the best match possible between employers and job seekers not only in terms of skills to job position but also workplace culture, lifestyle and personal fulfillment opportunities.
The company needed to modernise their old website because it looked outdated and didn’t serve their needs anymore.
With a contemporary look and feel and dramatically improved user experience including prominent calls to action, the new website enabled the company to leverage themselves as medical “matchmakers” for the employers and candidates and set themselves apart from other recruitment agencies.
Start Using your Website as a Powerful Business Tool Today
It is no longer enough to depend on traditional ways of running your business if you want your business to keep up with the competition. Your website can be a powerful business tool. A well-built website can help you strengthen your brand image, reach a wider audience, increase your income, and manage your business more effectively.
Are you ready to harness the full potential of your website? Let us help you.
Mettro is a proudly Queensland, independently owned and operated digital agency that has been delivering award-winning website design & development and digital marketing for over 20 years.
We are dedicated to solving our client’s business problems with smart, simple digital solutions and have the testimonials to prove it. We’ve built thousands of digital solutions including apps, eCommerce websites, custom software, eLearning applications, WordPress websites and Shopify Websites.
Our website design team is second-to-none with a focus on real user experience and creative interface designs, and our website development team delivers quality online customer experiences and measurable benefits to our clients every time.
We have a talented marketing strategy and creative team, renowned for designing and producing compelling digital campaigns, effective content marketing strategies, digital marketing and results-driven SEO.
Where to from here?
Contact us or book a one-on-one to discuss your web design and development project!