Your website – the shop window to your business

By Angela Bensemann, Director Halo Communications

Your website is the shop window to your business – the first impression for many clients or customers. I talk to web strategist Iona Elwood-Smith the founder of Grow my Business and Connection Station for her insights.

Q: When people were thinking about building a website or refreshing their old one, what things do  they need to be thinking about?

A: The first and foremost is the strategy. And that is really about the purpose of the website, what do you actually want it to do for your business or organization? Secondly, newsflash, it’s not about you. The website isn’t about what you like. It’s actually about your audience and making sure that you’ve got the right messages and that you are inviting them into your business or organization. And the third is keep it simple. Sometimes, websites get way overdone, with too much of everything. And you’ve got four seconds these days to capture people’s attention. So, you don’t want them lost and have them wandering off to somebody else’s website.

Q: It’s easy then, we’ve got to be strategic and big picture and then simple at the same time?

A: Yeah, all of those things.

Q: And what’s a common mistake or misconception that you see when people are embarking on this kind of project?

A: Well, not doing those three things for a start, you know, they really rush in, it’s like, oh, I need a website. So, they just go and build it for themselves. They think about what they like, they want it to be cool and have great functionality and they’re just not really thinking that for an end user that’s really cluttered. It’s just doing too much of everything and not thinking about it, about the purpose of the website.

Q: And, you know, we all love to do things ourselves and save a bit of money. So we’re a sort of nation of DIYers. What are your thoughts on the DIY approach? Because obviously, there are a lot of platforms around and you can do it yourself.

A: Yes, yes to all of the above, look, it’s got so much easier. And I think that’s really great for small businesses starting out, especially to define, you know, what it is that they do, who they’re talking to, you know, actually map out the business in a way that they can talk to anybody and everybody.

But for organizations and larger businesses, it’s really, do you want to look homemade? We go to professionals in our daily life, hairdressers, lawyers, doctors, we even we get professionals to mow our lawn. We do that for a reason, right? Because they can do it at a level that we can’t.

In terms of spectacular blunders, yes, I’m often called in. Words that strike fear into the heart of the web designer include, “I’ve built this website myself, and I’ve got a small problem”.

Several people have completely deleted their home pages. Some people will have forgotten to add how to contact them. And then they say, “nobody’s contacting me through my website”, and that’s because they’ve not activated the contact form.

There are lots of simple, simple mistakes that are easily fixed. So yes, it’s very interesting.

And not to mention either that, as someone who knows what they’re doing, it gets done more quickly. So it actually saves you time and money.

You might be able to do it yourself, but I think you have to ask the question, should you?

Q: So, just wrapping up, what would be the one key thing you’d like people to take away?

A: That usability is key, it’s that user experience when they come to your website, because you’ve built the website to get people to your business, right? You want them to have a great experience.

You don’t want it to be a shopfront, where you’ve just filled it up with all kinds of weird and wonderful things that you love. And people are going, Oh, I don’t get that at all, and they walk on by your shop.

You want it to be something where you’ve rolled out that welcome, that you’ve created really clear pathways and that they are going to come in and take action because that’s the point of the website, right? That they’re going to contact you. They’re going to book us, they’re going to buy a product. You ‘ve got to stay true to the ultimate purpose of your website.

Q: How do people get hold of you if they want to talk websites?

A: For my business clients, they can go to growmybusiness.co.nz and if you’re an organization, then you can contact me through connectionstation.co.nz.