We all spend a lot of our time online these days, I mean if you’re reading this well….enough said. Most business owners forget about their digital presence and don’t give it the time and energy it deserves. Starting a business is hectic and busy but just throwing up a facebook page and trying to get your business on Google will not lead to success for your business.
Your business deserves a digital strategy and it definitely deserves its very own online real estate in the form of a website…at the very least. People live online, people search online, people find everything they need online so you need to be there.
But what does that really mean? Here are 5 of the essentials for your business online.
1. A unique URL that matches your business
What is a URL? That is your web address. E.g. wyddigital.com.au Why did we choose this? Well, our business is named WYD Digital which actually stands for Whatever You Do. The .com.au just made sense for us being a business that is targeting other local businesses in Australia to work with. You need your own Url which is also known as a domain name. These are relatively cheap and can be purchased for around $10-20 a year. You should NEVER let someone else purchase this for you or hold it in their name as it is key to your business success. We hear stories often about a web designer who purchased the domain name for a business and now won’t give it to them as they want to leave and go to a new web designer. Unfortunately, there isn’t much that can be done to fix this so make sure you own your own unique URL.
2. A logo and catch phrase
Most businesses will already have these but you just need to think about if they truly represent your business and everything you want it to be. Was it something you made at the start of your business in 5 minutes or is it everything you want it to be to represent your business online.
3. A Professional Email Address
Have you ever tried to contact a business and their email address is insertbusinessnamehere@gmail.com? Not the most professional looking email addres now is it? So what do we do to fix that? Well, when you purchase your domain name you also get your email sorted out and you can end up with a highly professional email address just like our contact@wyddigital.com.au Whatever your domain name is, you can create an email address with it too!
4. Contact forms
So many websites we go to don’t have ways to contact the business quickly and easily. The easiest way to do this is with a well designed contact form. Someone can quickly and easily fill in the form, click send and off it goes. No need to find your email address and go to their emails just to contact you. But be careful! Contact forms are one of the easiest ways for people to use your website to send out spam. This is why on all of our websites we custom build we always utilise Recaptcha for extra protection on our forms.
5. A responsive design
You have probably heard of responsive design but what is it exactly? It is the way your website behaves on different sized screens. Ever been on the internet looking up websites on your phone only to discover that some of them look the exact same as on a computer except they are now teeny tiny? That is exactly what we don’t want to happen!
Google is now choosing which websites to show people base off of the mobile versions so it is vital that you have a well designed, responsive website not just for users but also as it has a direct impact on the performance of your site.
If you need some help with any of these things or just want to have a chat about the potential for your business then please get in touch today.