Whether it’s fixing a car or building a house, you need to know something about each area involved to make sure that the people working for you do a reasonable job. Running a company is no different.
As an entrepreneur, you don’t get to simply hire people who are specialists at what they do, and set them to work. It’s important to bring knowledge of every specialization to the job. If you don’t, you won’t really know how capable each candidate at an interview is, or how good they are at the work they do. You also can’t simply tell how well everything is going by looking at your bottom line.
Not only do you need to possess a reasonable amount of information about your product and about sales and marketing, but also about cash flow, the tax code, the labor code and retail science. These days, you need to know enough about website design and development, as well. According to web design and SEO major Appiloque, your website is the face of your company as far as your customer base is concerned; it’s important for you to know what makes the company website tick if you are to contribute intelligently to discussions with your web development team on what you want your website to do.
Unless all you want for your business is a simple, two-page HTML website, rather than one of today’s fluid, living, high-tech creations, you’ll need to go in with a little bit of knowledge on the entire process. What you want to do is to know enough to be able to hold intelligent conversations with your web development team.
Here are ideas on what you need to learn.
Your site needs to be viewable on every kind of device
People view websites on a bewildering range of devices, not just computers. Not only are there phones and tablets, there are smart televisions, gaming consoles, and car screens as well. In the past, web designers tried to develop separate design interfaces for separate devices. Not only was such work expensive, it required the maintenance of separate websites. The existence of multiple website versions tended to confuse not only search engines but consumers, as well.
Today, sites are built for responsive design — a website design system that ensures that content on a site automatically adjusts not only to the screens on different devices but to different window sizes and orientations on phone screens and computer screens, as well. It is vital to use the responsive design language to serve every type of visitor.
You need to invest in search engine optimization
It doesn’t matter if you have the most attractive website if no one sees it. No one will actually know about it, either, if major search engines such as Google don’t see that your website is significantly relevant to what searchers look for. If your website doesn’t appear at or near the top of search results pages when people search for the kind of products that you deal in, your website and your business will be forgotten.
Search engine optimization is an expert set of methods that informs website teams on every aspect of website design. The aim is to help develop websites that comply with the rules that search engines follow in looking for websites with good, reliable information.
SEO isn’t a set of clever “hacks” or tricks that experts with “inside knowledge” use on websites to somehow make them go to the top of search results. It is a logical process that involves learning about engagement with search engines. Learning about SEO and working with an SEO expert on a continuing basis is the single most important thing that an entrepreneur can do to move the company website towards success.
Not only will you learn through SEO about how to promote your website through social media marketing, blogs, content and pay-per-click advertising, you will learn to use analytical tools to investigate the success of your efforts, as well.
You need to invest in e-commerce and security
While some retail entrepreneurs are enthusiastic about e-commerce, others see no reason to bother with it. It’s important that you realize that selling online is the direction that retail is headed. Certainly, consumers appreciate the opportunity to touch and feel before they buy, but they also love being able to shop at a wide variety of locations without actually going there. It’s important to invest in e-commerce if only to allow users to browse every product. If your store doesn’t provide the ability to browse and buy online, it will be at a disadvantage. It’s important to invest in security, however. Consumers study new retail websites closely to judge them for trustworthiness. It wouldn’t do to build a website that presents an appearance of carelessness and insecurity.
Finally, it’s important to realize that building quality websites takes time from concept to rollout. Websites also need constant tweaking. A website requires ongoing investments of time and money for maintenance to keep safe, scalable and updated as your business grows. You should go in prepared for the kind of investment that it takes.
Joey is a digital marketing strategist based in Singapore. He has spent the last 3 years building Appiloque to become his most successful business to date. With a team of 12 in Singapore and 5 in the US, Joey aims to be at the forefront of innovative technologies in the digital marketing realm. In his free time, Joey is a true-blue Singaporean foodie and enjoys exchanging ideas on the topics of innovation and investment.
