Since the rise of the digital era, websites have become a must-have for almost every type of business. However, is it really important? This is an essential question as creating and maintaining a website is not an easy feat as it requires quite a bit of fund and efforts. And, on the other hand, just building a website doesn’t guarantee brand awareness of sales. In such cases, it becomes imperative, especially for small businesses, to question whether a website is an asset or a liability? 

However, before we delve deeper into the specifics of the question, let’s first define what we mean by ‘assets’ and ‘liabilities,’ as the words can be ambiguous. 

• Asset – Something generates more money for the company than it takes 
• Liability – Something that takes more money from the company than it generates 

The significant difference between the two terms is how much ROI is a particular expenditure providing. So, where does your website fit? 

While there are many debates around this question, the only real answer is that it entirely depends on how you look at it. For example, most small businesses owners consider websites to be a liability that is necessary to be undertaken to ensure they don’t look unprofessional. On the other hand, there are those businesses who know the value of having a website. It is after all the only place wherein a customer can interact with your brand 24/7 and is mostly the first point of contact between you and your customers. 

The only difference between the two is the mindset and knowledge of leveraging from the benefits of owning a website. A website that follows the rules of UI/UX and is well laid-out, and is optimized well for search engines is sure to establish trust among your existing and potential customers, making the website a definite asset for your company. However, a poorly designed website will not bring any customers, and even those who come are most likely not to convert into sales, thereby making the site a liability. It’s that simple. 

The Benefits of A Website For All Businesses 

To reiterate our stand, here are some benefits you can get by developing and maintaining an excellent website. 

Your True Brand Ambassador 

It’s not uncommon for brands to sign a celebrity as their brand ambassador in hopes to garner popularity among consumers. However, if the consumer has any question or wants to check your credibility, they cannot walk up to the celebrity and ask them directly. Instead, almost everyone refers to the businesses website for this information. A study revealed that when a person first visits your site, they form an opinion about you and your brand within the first 4.5 seconds. Depending on the layout and their personal preference, that opinion could be good or bad. Hence, it’s crucial to ensure the website is well-designed and is responsive. 

A Marketing Tool That Works Round The Clock 

In the digital world, there are no time restrictions as your website is available to the entire world. Considering time differences and people’s habits, a consumer could want certain information about your brand at any hour. In such cases, a website is highly beneficial as it provides relevant information about your brand round the clock, from anywhere. Moreover, to ensure you’re making the most of this marketing tool, you must keep updating the site with relevant information frequently to ensure people keep coming back to your site to learn more. 

The Ultimate Destination For All Marketing Efforts 

Regardless if you’re conducting offline marketing, email marketing or even social media marketing, all your efforts need to direct the users to one platform wherein they can get all the information required. Your website acts as that platform. Moreover, with effective analytical tools, you can even analyze the result of all your marketing efforts. Based on the data received, you can determine which strategies are working and which have scope for improvement.   

It’s Very Cost-Effective 

It’s a common notion that creating and maintaining a website is costly, but this is far from the truth. If you compare marketing through traditional methods, maintaining a website is quite cost-effective. Moreover, with the website, you can make as many changes as you want without any extra cost. 

While the benefits of owning a website are plenty, you can only fully make use of them if your website properly optimized, both for users and search engines. After combing through multiple case studies and conducting intense research we have created a list of the best practices to consider while building and maintaining your website.

Best Practices To Follow While Building Your Website 

1) Keep It Simple

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t want your website filled with multiple components. While it’s important to provide all the information on your website, your home page must have only the most important and relevant details. If you put everything on one page, you will overwhelm your audience, compelling them to leave your website. Instead, categorize the information and create separate pages, with each page covering one topic. Not only does this help users find information easily, but you can also cover more details about each topic as well. 

2) Videos Mean Conversions 

It’s no secret that people prefer watching videos over reading content as this allows them to retain the message for a longer duration. Hence, by creating interactive and engaging videos and integrating these videos on key conversion pages, you can increase the chances of visitors converting. These videos can cover a host of various topics, including information about your product, service, or even your entire company’s story. 

3) Capture Email Addresses 

Email marketing is still considered an extremely popular method for gaining leads and is known to provide the best ROI among all marketing methods. However, you cannot effectively carry out email marketing without a list of email addresses. If optimized right, a website is highly beneficial when it comes to building a lead list with email addresses of potential customers. For example, you can encourage them to provide their email addresses in exchange for some viable and relevant information about the industry. 

4) Testimonials, Clients, And Case Studies Are Vital 

The purpose of a website, along with providing relevant information about your company, is to build trust and credibility for your brand among existing and potential customers. It works as a social proof that states that your brand is legit. However, simply building a website isn’t enough. Due to multiple scams and fake websites, consumers have become extremely cautious. Hence, you must share real testimonials, existing and past clients, as well as various case studies about the industry. Not only will this help build credibility, but it will also position you as an industry expert among customers. 

5) Choose Your Words Wisely 

The content that you publish on your website has a massive impact on both visitors and search engines. Hence, you need to be extremely careful with how you optimize your content. It is recommended to target different market segments while creating the content. This is useful as it helps you draw in customers from various marketings and gives you the opportunity to portray yourself as an expert in various industries as well. 

6) Up-sell Your Services 

There’s no argument that up-selling a service to an existing customer is easier compared to convincing a new customer to buy your product or service. Moreover, your website is the best way to up-sell your services. The best tactic to do this is through internal linking. Make sure that relevant product or service pages are linked to each other, and the content is highlighting the benefits of purchasing the entire package, instead of just one product or service. 

7) Flaunt Your Value Proposition 

With a plethora of industries in the market, customers are spoiled for choice. Hence, if you want them to choose your brand, you need to state what sets you apart from the rest clearly. This USP is known as your value proposition. Your value proposition should be reflected on landing pages or key conversion pages. To effectively create a compelling value proposition, use these pointers mentioned below: 

• Explain how your product or service solves a customer’s problem 
• Explain what benefits your customer will get by collaborating with your brand
• Explain why they should purchase from you instead of your competitor 

8) Make Use of Chatbots 

AI is taking over the world, and the digital marketing industry is no different. One of the most prominent uses of AI in digital marketing are chatbots present on your website. These chatbots are largely popular, primarily because consumers get answers to their questions or doubts almost instantly at any hour of the day. Regardless of the size of the business or industry, every company can benefit by incorporating this technology on their websites.

 9) Optimize Your FAQ Page 

As mentioned previously, the main reason why users visit a website is to gather relevant information about the brand. If they aren’t able to find the information easily, they are most likely going to leave your website and visit your competitor’s website. A FAQ page is a great way to address almost all of your visitor’s queries, with all the information stored in one place. Moreover, by effectively optimizing the FAQ page, you can also rank on the 0th position on search engine result pages for relevant keywords. As this position is visible above the 1st position, it’s needless to say it receives a lot more traffic compared to the other results. 

10) Constantly Perform A/B Testing For Improvement 

The one thing constant about the digital marketing industry is change. Right from the latest trends and techniques to the technology used, everything is constantly evolving. With this constant evolution, customer preferences are changing too. To keep track of these preferences and to identify which strategy works and which doesn’t, A/B testing is crucial. Right from identifying which colour and font work best, to ensuring the perfect words are chosen, A/B testing allows you to pick even minute components to ensure your website is built to perfection to get conversions. 

That being said, conducting these A/B tests aren’t easy, and there are multiple steps involved. Right from categorizing the audience to evaluating their results, conducting these tests manually is close to impossible. The best way to complete these tests effectively and accurately is by using relevant tools. 

The Most Popular A/B Testing Tools For Websites 

Mentioned below, we have listed the four best A/B testing that you could use while building your website for best results. 

1) Qualaroo 

Specially designed to gather insights about a visitor’s intent or preference, Qualaroo primary focusing on getting maximum conversions. To do this, they analyze the data collected and present adaptive offers, as a targeted call to action or lead generation forms, that help drive conversions in real-time. 

2) Bounce Exchange 

Taking the other end of the spectrum, this tool focuses on those visitors who didn’t convert. By analyzing the engagement of the visitors who didn’t convert, the tool finds which page has most visitor drops. Then, the tool provides recommendations about how you can improve the website to help confused visitors. 

3) WebEngage 

This tool helps to increase the conversion rate and generate leads by analyzing and profiling website visitors, measuring customer satisfaction and push on-demand notifications. 

4) OptinMonster 

OptinMonster is known for its form creation tool as it helps to create attention-grabbing opt-in forms that compel users to convert and purchase the product or provide their email IDs. You can also use this tool for A/B testing and page-level targeting. 

In The End… 

The question isn’t if a website is a liability or an asset. The real question is whether a business is able to make the most of this incredibly beneficial asset or not. As industry experts with years of experience, we at LeGusTry know all the specifics that are needed to build an effective website. For more information, contact us today!