A business website is more than a virtual storefront. It is the reincarnation of your brand in a digital marketplace that will become the central hub for your company’s online advertising and communications. It acts as a virtual elevator pitch where businesses have less than eight seconds to convince users they are in the right place.

The website is the most powerful tool to grow a business in the age of the internet. It translates your brand identity, values, and vision to billions of users online. Its primary goal is to communicate your unique value proposition and influence visitors to make a purchase, appointment, or request more information. The features and content have a measurable impact on the volume and quality of leads your company attracts online. But a website can be much more than an informative and engaging online portal. It can be useful. Interactive. Interesting. Impressive.

A website should be a valuable resource to leads, customers, and employees. It should showcase your work, tell your brand story, and communicate a high perceived value of your products and services. It can integrate with other systems, automate workflow and tasks, even attract and recruit new employees. But most importantly, it can be a primary tool for sales, marketing, and customer service to better serve both your prospective audience and your current customer base.

Here are four ways a new website can transform your brand image and increase revenue.

#1 Re-Imagine Your Brand

A user forms an opinion about your website in less than two tenths of a second. What is the opinion you want the consumer to have, regarding your brand? This is called your brand image.

A modern, aesthetically-pleasing website helps your company communicate a professional, and powerful brand image, as well as a high-perceived value of your products and services. The structure, fonts, colors, spacing, imagery, calls to action, and page loading speed all play a role in delivering a message to the user about your brand.

According to Adobe’s State of Content Report, 38 percent of users will stop engaging with a website entirely if the content or layout is unattractive. A beautiful website by the worst-rated company will always outperform a terrible website by the top-rated company. And that is how you lose online market share.

If your website was built before 2014, it is likely it was built without mobile device screen sizes in mind that now account for 50 percent of global traffic. If the design is outdated or hard to navigate, users may get the impression the company and their technologies are outdated. These factors not only impact users who visit your site, but also how visible your site is in search results.

A new website design is so much more than a cosmetic improvement. It alters the way consumers feel about your brand, how they feel about your products and services, and even how they feel about themselves. That’s the power of a remarkable brand experience.

#2 Create Content That Converts Clicks To Customers

Websites that publish unique, high-value content are rewarded with top placement in search results. This leads to more visitors, more leads, and more sales. When you develop a content strategy that’s aligned with your business goals and leverages the best practices of SEO, you can tap into the steady stream of online users searching for the services and products you sell.

This starts by creating well thought out and keyword-optimized, conversion-focused web pages that pre-qualify visitors and convert them to leads. It continues with other types of content such as videos and infographics, and access to more content on other channels such as social media.

Here are four content suggestions to help drive more traffic to your site and convert more visitors to leads:

• Design an infographic to increase visibility in Google Image Search
• Create gated content to grow your email marketing list
• Publish monthly blog posts to increase visibility in organic search
• Produce video content to engage visitors on a higher level

A successful content marketing strategy is forged from an authentic brand personality, a clear definition of business goals, a deep understanding of the target audience, and the willingness to learn from web data. It requires creativity and consistency, collaboration and communication, and multi-channel execution. The best time to have had a content strategy to market your business online was ten years ago. The second-best time is now.

#3 Employ E-Tools To Enhance the Customer Experience

Why do you purchase things from the places you purchase things from? Is it because it is easy to find the things you are looking for? Is it because they anticipate your needs, are conveniently located, or respond quickly?

A new website can better serve your customers, leads, and staff by incorporating technologies and features that save time and money while also delivering a thoughtful, engaging, five-star customer experience. This may be through a live chat function for immediate access to support, or CRM software to automate everyday tasks and enhance communications.

Here are four ways to enhance the customer experience through your website:

Online Scheduling

Online scheduling tools such as Bookly help business owners better manage their time and provide a convenient way for customers to book an appointment through the website. They can also send automated email and text confirmations that reduce cancellations and missed appointments. If an online scheduling tool can save one employee just ten minutes a day in a 250-workday year, that is a total of nearly 42 hours they can devote to more profitable activities each year.

Live Chat

The need to respond to an online request as quick as possible continues to grow as consumers have come to expect immediate access to information, goods, and services. The ability to answer a question in real-time and address a potential customer’s concerns in the crucial moment before they make a purchasing decision can give your company an immediate advantage.

Form Submission

Forms collect various types of information. They may ask what product a lead is interested in, new patient information for a first appointment, or job applicant info. These forms can be delivered directly to the appropriate departments and improve efficiency of communication between all parties.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software

CRM software serves a number of purposes that help deliver a better customer experience. This includes:

• Centralizing customer info and communications
• Marketing automation
• Sales and service activities
• Standardization and scaling of the sales process
• Sharing information inter-departmentally
• Segmenting of leads and customers for more targeted marketing communications

Throughout history, technology has driven innovation and growth. Unlocking success in digital transformations with forward-thinking technologies should be the number one priority for every business.

#4 Analyze Website Data To Make More Informed Decisions

Small and mid-sized organizations have access to a wealth of website visitor data. Too many fail to learn from it or act on it.

By analyzing website traffic and user behavior with free tools like Google Analytics, any company can make data-driven decisions such as: how to improve their website, what content is the most popular on their site, and where traffic with the highest conversion rate originates from.

These tools provide an in-depth look at the visitors and their actions on your site. What percentage are new visitors vs. returning? Where are they located? What pages did they visit, and for how long? The data will tell you where your website is doing well, where it needs to improve, and how to better your sales process and marketing strategy.

With a better understanding of user behavior and what changes to your website will impact that behavior, three things start to happen. Your company begins to make small, data-driven improvements each month, week, or day that result in more customer satisfaction, higher conversion rates, and better marketing ROI.

Building A Better Brand With A New Website

A new website design can be a transformative event for a company. With the proper planning, information gathering, brand discovery, design, copywriting, and construction, a new website will alter the way your company communicates with its audience and does business both online and off.

If your company is looking to transform your brand image and increase revenue with a new website, contact us today.