10 Ways to Use Your Website to Improve Business

(01/22/2015) BannerView Staff

website improve business

As part of our Business Development Series of articles, we contacted the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) and posed a couple of questions to their membership. The questions pertain to using a website in the most effective way possible to grow a business. The answers provided can be applied by any business owner or entrepreneur seeking expert advice.

The Young Entrepreneur Council, an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

In what area do you currently see business owners not effectively using their websites for their business? What would you suggest they do?

1. Offer Assistance

If you help someone, they are a thousand times more likely to help you back. Gain a customer's trust by helping them and giving them something for free. Don't expect anything in return. If business owners figured this one out instead of just pushing people to a lead, they would start getting a lot more customers.

- John Rampton, JohnRampton.com

2. Make Your Site Useful for Your Channel Partners

Every startup delineates between direct sales (e.g. through your website) and sales by "channel" partners. Most websites are built to capture direct sales. Instead, build a site that your channel partners are excited to share too. Highlight who your partners are and why they're great. Making them look better will grow their sales, which will of course grow yours. You're all on the same team!

- Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches

3. Generate Phone Calls

Sixty percent of small business websites don't have their phone number on their homepage. You've worked hard for your traffic -- convert them. Make it easy.

- Anthony Saladino, Kitchen Cabinet Kings

4. Build an Engaged Community

Use a tool like Captain Up or Spot.IM to create a much more engaged community on your website. Having a static website for your business is a huge loss when you could be leveraging it much more. Captain Up and Spot.IM offer powerful solutions to create much more engagement on your site.

- Ben Lang, Mapme

5. Include Quality Content

Most of the time companies struggle to see value in writing content because it's a large time investment and does not immediately result in increased sales. In the long term though, quality content is necessary to attract people to your site through better SEO, and to help validate your understanding of your industry. Unique content establishes you and your firm as a thought leader.

- Randy Rayess, VenturePact

6. Add a Call to Action

As a business owner, your site is a huge opportunity to connect with your customer, whether you are in e-commerce or physical retail. But you need to have a defined action you want your site visitor to take and you need to ask them to take it. Whether it's a purchase or signing up for your email newsletter, make sure to provide a clear, compelling call to action for each of your visitors.

- Brewster Stanislaw, Inside Social

7. Create a Personalized and Personal Relationship With Visitors

Many businesses still struggle with how to create a personal relationship with their visitors. The modern web has raised the bar significantly in the expectations of tailoring content to the individuals and, at a minimum, the appropriate grouping of people. Businesses looking to derive value from the web need to focus on dynamic a web presence that adjusts to the behaviors of visitors.

- Michael Spinosa, Unleashed Technologies

8. Let Your Talent Shine

The careers section on company websites is usually only used to post open jobs. However, this can be a great area to call attention to the quality and vibrancy of your company culture. Potential clients and partners will often check out this section as part of their research. Make it shine. For inspiration, check out how Zappos highlights their culture and talent on their website.

- Miles Jennings, Recruiter.com

9. Offer Web-Exclusive Deals and Perks

Consumers can find out a great deal about your company from a simple Google search, but to effectively direct traffic to your website, you need to have incentives. Offering perks like coupons, free shipping and chances to win prizes make it irresistible for casual browsers to peek at your products and see what your company is all about.

- Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep

10. Upgrade Your Site

Many business owners stick to the site they've had for the last 5-10 years. This is a bad strategy, because website design progresses very fast these days. If your site hasn't been updated in the past few years, you'll risk looking like a cheap, unsuccessful business. Please, don't tell me you missed the rise in mobile design the past few years.

- Andy Karuza, SpotSurvey