Your Company Website As A Local Store

Your Website As A BusinessThere are many analogies between websites and brick and mortar businesses. I was thinking about stores’ locations and how many customers they get from people who just happen to be walking by and decided to put some thoughts into a quick post comparing a store and a website.

A store can get customers in from a few ways

  • They have a good location that potential customers will walk by and decide to go in
  • They can advertise (TV, radio, print) and hope for people to specifically come looking for their store
  • They can provide a great experience, quality service or product and have customers turn into evangelists for them via word of mouth to their friends
  • In order for those people in the store to purchase something, they’ll have to find something they like and easily be able to purchase it

These different ways of getting customers can directly be related to driving traffic to your website

  • You have a great domain name that you can climb to the top of the rankings by excellent search engine optimization where people will be “walking by your store” or searching for terms you have a high page rank for and seeing your site on Google
  • You can run a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign and advertise to have your site come up on Google’s sponsored links when people search for what you are offering. You will also only pay for every time someone “comes into your store” or clicks on your link, so PPC advertising can actually be more directly efficient than off-line campaigns.
  • You offer great, quality content on your website and your visitors share your links with all of their social media connections
  • To convert visitors into customers, your site needs to be well designed in order for the visitor to find what they are looking for and then easily be able to follow through with a call to action (whether that be contacting the company or purchasing something right there on the site)

With these points in mind, you can better understand how to make your website more successful. In that journey to success, check out how to increase your local search rankingsstrengthening your brand awareness with social media and the on-site seo factors to helping your Google rankings.