No matter what kind of business you’re running, it’s essential these days for you to have an online presence. Potential customers will often Google your business, searching for available products, reviews, and at the very least additional information about you. It’s incredibly important to seize your online identity and make sure that potential customers are receiving the message you want them to hear. Here are our top three tips for establishing your website and reputation on the internet.
- Pick a relevant domain. First of all, try and find a name that’s as close to your business’s name as possible. This will help you show up in search results and, as a bonus, is easy for your future customers to remember and return to. Your domain address should end in a .com if you are aiming your business internationally. If you’re sticking to the UK, a .co.uk address will serve you better. By all means purchase other domain extensions, so wayward searchers can still find you, but redirect them to your main address. A .com or .co.uk address will indicate that you are a genuine and authoritative web site. Sometimes, a .org can carry similar prestige, but those are generally more suitable for non-profit organisations.
- Choose a qualified designer to put together the site. You may want to use a freely available, mainstream tool to manage the back-end, like Joomla or Wordpress for a blog, but it’s important to have a modern, sophisticated design to maintain your professional appearance and tie in with your overall brand. Keep in mind that you’ll want to maintain your brand’s image across the web, so ensure your chosen brand logo is easily adaptable and resizable across the web.
- Set up your social presence across the internet. Claim or set up your business listings on Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, and Bing Maps. Take advantage of review services such as Yelp and ask frequent customers to write reviews for you. If your business warrants it, set up social media profiles with your name and branding. Even if you are unsure of your strategy going forward, it is well worth claiming your business’s name on Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare (if you have a physical shop). That way, whenever the need arises for you to make use of the services, they are already set up and ready to go. It’s always best to ensure that your name is represented by you and you alone to maintain the integrity of your brand and the consistency of your appearance everywhere.
It’s important as well to have reputable IT support in order to manage your servers. Once you’ve gone to all the trouble and expense of designing, building, and setting live a new website, the last thing you want to happen is for it to go down. Talk to your IT support team or outsourced IT support company about the requirements your new site may have and the servers you’ll need to ensure it stays up at all times.
Tags: websites
