4 Top Reasons You Need to Improve Your Local Business Website

When I see a local business that’s successful even though its website isn’t producing results, I get excited. To me, it’s a business opportunity.

The growth that can be achieved is often quite impressive; I’ve worked with business that have seen sales increase by 50% or even 100% through using the internet better.

I know that’s the kind of growth that every business owner would love to see, but many don’t understand that it’s possible, especially if they run a local brick and mortar business with no intent of offering services or products over the internet.

But the internet can offer so much more than just an opportunity to sell online; it can bring more traffic to your location.  How? Read on to find out!

Better Focus Your Marketing Plan

When you develop your website, you should go through a brainstorming process that is similar to what you might have done when first creating your business plan. You need to think about your customers. Who are they? What are their needs? Keyword research and an analysis of your competition are also two important components of the process that can help you learn how to better reach customers.

Brand Building

Because online marketing is data driven, it takes much of the guesswork out of determining what customers want from your business. After gathering data on your website traffic and common search terms, you’ll define target keywords, identify customer segments, and use data segmentation to refine even further.  As you do, you’ll get a better and better picture of what your customers respond to – and can build your brand accordingly.

Get More Prospects to Convert

Many businesses make the mistake of focusing almost entirely on the look of their website when developing it – but they lose sight of what the primary focus should be: getting results! Over time, your website can be used as a tool to track data and improve your conversion rate. Even if you’re not selling anything on the site, you can look at things like how many people visit the Contact Us page to learn how to visit your location or fill out a form to get more information. Then you adjust to help improve the process. These lessons can often be transferred directly into your store.

Sales Process Automation

If you think about your site as a conveyor belt, people are moving along the sales process towards their final destination: making a purchase or hiring your services. Not everyone will make it to the end, but utilizing data that you collect at each step of the way, you can figure out why. Using the doctrine of Six Sigma, you can look for and rectify any issues, refining the process to make results happen more often.

Many business are leaving unknowingly leaving money on the table – or worse, handing it over to competitors’ – by not making full use of their website. Don’t let that be you! Take advantage of all that internet marketing has to offer.

About Shepard Morrow

Shepard Morrow is the head of Location Traffic, an internet marketingand business consultingcompany in Pennington, New Jersey. He helps owner-operators to grow their businesses using a unique approach developed over 15 years in the internet marketing industry and from his experience running retail, wholesale, and internet businesses. Learn more at LocationTraffic.com or call 609-737-8667.