Do you even website?

Following from a number of conversations I’ve had online recently around websites and their importance for building your brand and authority online, I thought I would formalise these thoughts and conversations into a blog.

With a rise in e-commerce through social media, and other means, I regularly get asked why would I even bother investing in building a website, when there are so many other tools available to me.

The truth is, we need a multi faceted approach to e-commerce and building our ecosystem to best serve our customers and potential prospects, so it is not one or the other but understanding the importance of each and the roles they play.

Social media plays a crucial role in driving traffic to our website, simply because of the mass of users, and the fact that these platforms have spent a lot of time in encouraging people to regularly return and consume more content.

When you understand this, you will understand that social media has a role to play in generating traffic to your own website.

The downside to social media and the very reason for having your own website, and the main reason for this blog, is that your own website is your own real estate and the only place where you truly control the whole customer experience.

Your website is also your digital shopfront or storefront, and represents you 24 hours a day seven days a week, 365 days a year. Long gone are the days where you get to determine when people do business with you or look at your products and services. The truth is you are likely to do business with people through your website in the early hours of the morning, at a time where in traditional settings you would not have even been available.

Having considered your website as your own digital storefront or shopfront, it’s important to maintain and upkeep that digital asset. You may be wondering how to do this, and the answer is simple. In the same way you would serve your customers in person, you need to continually provide value, and look for new ways to serve them in the online digital space.

Many people who have invested in websites, have missed the point in regularly updating, and continuing to develop that very assets that they invested in in the first place. This is an easy thing to do by way of writing blogs, creating videos which are in bed, and generating other resources both free and paid by way of products and services that serve your customer base.

One very important conversation that came up this week was talking about websites was around landing pages for specific conversion on products. The point being made in that conversation by the other party was around removing distractions to drive towards the ultimate aim of the sale for that product or service. I went on to discuss the importance of including these landing pages on your own domain, and namely your website, in order to build time on site, and the main authority for your own business brand.

The truth is, there are a number of solutions out there that will allow you to create landing pages and dare I say it funnels quickly and easily, hosted not on your own website or domain, but through other services..

In the real physical world would you rather someone attended your shop where you controlled the whole customer experience and everything they could purchase belong to you, or that they went to a department store where there were other offerings, and they did not know your brand until they discovered it in the store?

Whilst I appreciate that a landing page hosted elsewhere is uniquely yours, if you have made it that way, although most people use templates. The very fact that you are sending people away from your own domain to spend time on someone else’s real estate is still something that somewhat baffles me.

Even on some of the most basic WordPress built websites, you can disable the header and footer and all links to other pages in order to create what is effectively a landing page with the sole intention of converting the visitor into a customer.

The truth is that it comes down to education and understanding, as well as the fact that humans these days are being pulled in so many directions with so many demands on their time, that they often will settle for what appears to be the quickest easiest solution.

With a little time investment, understanding that your own landing pages or sales pages hosted on your own website, contribute to your brand equity, your domain authority, and allow you to control the whole customer experience from start to finish, without any restrictions by a third-party.

So back to the question of why websites? Not only is this your own real estate in the digital world, allowing you to control the whole customer experience and sales process, but it is one integral part, and digital assets, within an ecosystem that you are building to reinforce your brand, business, services and products.

If you have been in business any length of time, or been invested in any business or personal development programs, then I am confident that you are aware of the phrase know like and trust! With that being said why would you want not to have people as part of your own ecosystem but to send them elsewhere?

Whether it is the full website, or specific sales and landing pages, the design, the look and feel, the wording and even the process of handling the customer journey and experience lies solely with you. Any templated software could leave you falling into the trap of looking just like everybody else, over still you may find limitations or complications in implementing the exact experience you’re trying to create within one of these ‘easy to use’ funnel builders.

So I would suggest thinking long and hard before investing by financially and with your most valuable resource of time into any third-party provision that doesn’t sit on your own domain, or within your own website.

If you’re not sure how to do this within your own site, all it takes is a quick Google search or dropping me a message and I would be more than happy to help you, as one thing frustrates me more than anything, people making money from other peoples lack of knowledge.

If you don’t already have your own website, it is worth considering what it would look like to create one, as it is quite often a misconception that having a website is costly and difficult to maintain. Various content management systems CMS, such as WordPress have a really democratised publishing, and made it accessible to anyone to build their own website from the ground up.

Regularly updating the website, is no more than having to regularly add value by way of blogs, videos, or other digital or physical resources available to your user base.

As I have previously mentioned, websites are not the be all and end all of building your business and the sales process, but they are an integral digital asset, and provide a digital shopfront that works for you around the clock allowing you to earn money in your sleep, when set up properly, whilst maintaining the relationship with your customers.

With these things in mind I would love to know a few things from those of you who have made it to the end of this article…

1. Do you currently have an up to date website?
2. How often do you update it?
3. Is your website working for you?

Let me know in the comments & if you had any questions around websites, I wanted to try and convince me otherwise, please do drop me a message, and I will be more than happy to engage in a conversation, as we are all able to learn from one another, and whatever the outcome, healthy conversation is an integral part of any business and sales ecosystem.

Thanks for your time…

Tristan Griffiths?AKA?#ImTristanG

ORIGINALLY POSTED : https://in9.media/20220104