Business owners may agree that their website is a necessary evil, however, I find that a lot of companies use their site as a glorified business card. They feature basic information about their business and a way to communicate with them. But for the cost and effort of having a website – are you really maximizing your website presence?
At a recent networking meeting, I spoke about all of the “missed opportunities” your website could be providing for your company, here are just a few:
- Invoicing and other online payments
An e-commerce site is NOT out of reach for any business. But what if you don’t have anything you “sell”? Do you invoice clients? Did you know you could do that through your website? I find it’s an amazing way to take payments via Square and Paypal and an awesome way to deliver estimates. - Appointment Setting
How often do you go back and forth with clients – trying to find a time to meet and chat that works for both of you? Did you know that you can set appointments through your website for little or no cost? Both OnceHub and Calendly offer amazing options for this service and I’ll tell you it’s made my life SO much easier! Recently speaking with a few businesses, they also said they utilize the “vetting” options – where in scheduling the appointment it asks clients a few basic questions. Definitely a time saver for you and your customer! - Get more information from your customers
Using Gravity forms or Google forms (or many other options), you can collect information from clients, employees. There are so many applications depending on your business. I have one client who integrates some fairly complicated forms with Salesforce and uses the information to place students in targeted classes. - Private area for customers or employees
You can add a simple password protected section for members of an organization or employees. This is an amazing place to add special announcements, opportunities, forms and more. - Live chat
If you have a service oriented business and want customers to be able to reach out to you, this is a fairly simple integration and you can receive these chat messages to your phone. - Accessibility and Language services
For people with different abilities, you can change text size, color and maintain the functionality of your basic website. You can also make your site available in multiple languages, and while the translator isn’t infallible it may be a great way to reach a whole new customer base for your company.
Reach out and see how I can help maximize your web presence!
