What would be considered a Success when it comes to a business website?

Success with any business website has much to do with the purpose behind the website which was created. What is the intended purpose for this particular website?

General Purpose of Website

The following may be your purpose for having a website, which I have gathered whenever I ask my participants 'Why do they want to have a website?', or 'What did they create their existing website for?'.

1. I just want a website so that I can have it printed in my business card, and people can visit my website for more information. If there is anything in my website that atracts them, they can then call me for a meeting or a quotation.
2. The image of my company will be enhanced further because it looks more professional with a website that showcases the people and products behind my company.
3. It is for the purpose of branding. People will know about our brand and what we stand for, thereby gaining credibility and confidence in what we do, sell and represent.
4. To promote a 'cause for good' project, changing the mindset of general public for example to conserve energy, using alternative fuel source, and gather support for some environmental events.
5. To promote and sell new lifestyle products to the affluent consumers which will benefit their life and health.
6. To harvest consumers data, which will be used for the promotion of future products from the company.
7. To ensure that my company has a global presence, as the local market is very competitive and there is limitation to our growth and expansion.
8. To get more customers on-line, and then closing them off-line when they visit my retail shop.

Main Purpose of Websites

If we look at the above purposes of having websites, one main reason is to obtain more leads, and definitely targeted leads. These leads not necessarily will come from your own country, but from the global community. So what if you get more leads? Without a doubt, business being business, any business website is set up for the purpose of profitable gain.

Search Engine Optimized Websites

A business website that is not Search Engine optimized will wait for a indefinite long time, before they see fruits from their website. In the USA, it is a common and yet important design requirement for websites to have SEO (Search Engine Optimization) elements.

Unfortunately, web designers I spoke to locally do not want the hassle of adding SEO elements into websites, as it is tedious and time consuming. They would rather just do the job, finish with it, satisfy the client's request, deliver it and get paid without much hassle.

SEO Education

Finggle's recent SEO Workshops and Web Design Courses attracted participants from both small and large businesses. Participants range from those who are owners of personal business websites to media players in the market.

These are just a couple of reasons why they are educating themselves on SEO.

1. Having read and heard about SEO from other sources, they want to know how to increase the number of leads to improve their businesses, and make their websites more popular to the world at large.
2. Some have given up hope on their web designers, because they do not have the skill to help them create websites which can rank well in the Search Engines both locally and globally.

Just picking on two small businesses whose owners have got themselves educated on SEO. They have seen their websites ranked No. 1 or in the first page of Search Engine Result Pages, for specific popular keywords used within their industries. Their successes explain the importance of SEO education and then applying it to their business websites.

SEO Success Story 1

A local startup, BPI Technology Pte Ltd, which poineered a revolutionary mold release coating using nano-technology saw a tremendous increase in enquiries. They generated more traffic in one month than in a year, after implementing SEO techniques on their website. (Visit http://youtube.com/watch?v=I1KKFJ8cqJI for the full story.)

SEO Success Story 2

More visitors have visited the website after a couple of months from implementing a few SEO techniques to its business website. Website is well ranked for targeted keywords searched by potential clients. It has now been able to attract unique or new visitors who actually stay on the website to learn about the clinic and its services. Within that short frame of time, the number of clients this aesthetic clinic gets in a month through internet searches, it gets it within a week, and increasing. As a result, business has expanded to a larger floor space to cater to more clients.

Much of what is popular in the West, used to take 5 years to make its way to this region. With the internet age, it will be shorter now. Business owners need to gain that competitive advantage by searching the internet for SEO information, get knowledgeable on what SEO is all about, get yourself educated through books and even workshops.

Mr Jolly Tan is an SEO consultant at Finggle Pte Ltd (http://www.Finggle.com). The company helps website owners learn to strategise their websites, and to improve search engine ranking and visibility. The company also provides training and consultancy to organisations in search engine optimisation and search engine marketing.