Many small and medium-sized companies, and not just start-ups, often ask us how to create a website , and in particular answers to the following (and legitimate) doubts:
How to structure it?
Which technology to use (Wix, Joomla, Wordpress, etc.)
What are the maintenance costs?
If all platforms are equivalent when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization, i.e. getting to the top positions in search engine results, Google first and foremost).
We will answer these doubts with a series of in-depth posts: in this one we focus on how to structure your website.
Please stop talking about a showcase site
The most classic incipit when starting this conversation with an SME is... " A showcase site is enough for me, where people understand what we do ."
Well, from our point of view it is the worst way to approach the creation or restyling of a corporate website .
The 4 questions to ask yourself
The correct approach involves answering the following questions:
What is your brand positioning (if you don't know what it is here is a fantastic book that explains it to you )
Who will visit your website
What do you want me to find right away ?
What service do you want your website to perform for them?
If you answer (sincerely) to these questions, you will notice how a classic site with the sections " home, services, products, where we are, contacts " is simply insufficient to make navigation and permanence on your website interesting , and then convert visitors into contacts .
Let's show our cards
Let's see this approach with a practical example, that is our website :
Answer 1:
We are a small marketing agency specialized in SMEs, and unlike our competitors we do not implement standard strategies , but we create unique projects every time to help clients create effective and accessible marketing strategies.
For this reason, in the video on the homepage we show ourselves while we work and our brand positioning is written immediately underneath .
Answer 2:
Our website is usually visited by SME entrepreneurs who need to create their marketing plan or launch specific marketing campaigns .
For this reason the main menu of the site is very concise , to avoid wasting time and to immediately show what we can do for him (the projects), who we are (an important element to create empathy) or to give free resources for training (the blog, something we strongly believe in).
Not all our services are listed, precisely because from time to time we mix them to create a project.
Answer 3:
We want you (entrepreneur) to immediately find what we have done so far , that is, the projects completed. For this reason, they are clearly visible on the home page and in the main menu.
We know that our customers are not marketing experts and that they evaluate whether to call us or not by understanding what can be useful to them through what we have already done .
Answer 4:
Spread the marketing . For this reason our site is completely unbalanced in content. A consistent blog and little presentation fluff.
This obviously applies to the Italian market (abroad we have a different approach, with a dedicated website).
In conclusion
Very often, the CMS platform is chosen before having defined the purpose and structure of the website, and this leads to the creation of anonymous websites that are unlikely to generate conversions.
If you want to create a website first answer the 4 questions above.
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