Websites and content
A website is like a virtual equivalent of a showroom or storefront. Like a physical shop, it has an address that people can visit: in the online world that is called a domain name, for example the domain name of this website is digitalbusiness.gov.au. Getting your content right is important to ensure you are successful in your online marketing objectives.
Increasingly, people use a web search as the first step to finding a business or organisation. This makes your web presence an important first point of contact with your customers, supporters and donors.
Some of the great advantages a web presence has over a physical showroom include:
- lower costs than bricks and mortar
- access by anyone, at any time, from anywhere in the world with an internet connection
- more effective presentation of your organisation’s offerings because you are not limited by physical shelf space or the need for prominent a shopfront
- leveraging many types of marketing activities to promote your organisation and its offerings
- information is always current and accessible, and you can manage it from a single location for use by your salespeople or members, donors and supporters.
This section includes explanations about basic website design and build such as:
To attract customers, supporters and donors and maximise your chances of search engine optimisation, you should include material that is well-targeted, interesting and relevant to the visitors that you want to attract to your site. Design your content with care to lead visitors to your site and encourage them to interact with your organisation in the ways you intend.
Many of the different elements that you could include in your website are described in the creating and maintaining content section. Updating and maintaining that content is easiest done via a web content management system (CMS).
Given the growth in handheld devices and smartphones, you should consider optimising your web content for mobiles.
The findability of your content and website are also important for attracting and retaining customers, supporters and donors. More information on these issues is in the tagging and metadata and keywords sections.
Finally, is also important that when you are operating in the online world that you understand possible legal issues.
