If you’re a small rural business looking to expand your customer base, you need to get eyes on your product from further afield. Social media presence is a good start, but for a central and professional presence, you need a website.
Your website is your shop front for everyone who cannot actually access your shop. It is where non-local people can get an idea of who you are, what you do and why they should choose you. So many local businesses skimp on their website, or opt to only use social media. Lacking a good quality website for your business is cutting you off from a large portion of potential customers. So, what makes a good website for rural businesses? Here’s a few tips to get you started.
Your Website is Your Business
Your website should be the place where people learn about your product and buy into your business. You want to keep your bounce rate (when people immediately exit your site) low by having engaging graphics, images and videos on your landing page, as well as a consistent and appealing visual brand. You can read about the importance of branding here. From your landing page, you should have links and CTA buttons (buttons which lead users to take a desired action, like booking a session). The placement of these links and buttons must be designed in an intuitive and accessible structure to help your customers navigate your website.
Your Website is for Your Customers
The website is the centre of your business’ relationship with your customer. It should provide visitors with understanding of who you are, where they can find you and how to reach out. There should be clear customer testimonials about the quality of your business. Also, a key way people communicate with businesses is through social media. Therefore, your website should integrate your social media feeds, driving more traffic to your business on all platforms. More traffic = more attention = more sales.
It Needs to Work Every Time, Every Place
We live in a world of varying technology. Most people no longer surf the web using computers but smartphones and tablets. It’s essential that your website is optimised for these different technologies. It doesn’t matter if your website is a masterpiece of graphic design and visual content; if it doesn’t work on mobile, it’s not worth having.
Analyse This
A website is always a work in progress. There is always a slight change in architecture, wording or visual content that can make it a more pleasant, accessible experience for you end users. Something as simple as a change in colour scheme may up you conversion rate of site visitors to paying customers. A good analytics package will allow you to assess what does and doesn’t work on your website and allow you to make changes as fit, turning your website into a true asset to your business.
We Can Help
We’re not pretending this is a simple task, it requires mix of technical knowhow and creativity in content production. Each section of this article has pages and pages of guidance written on the internet. There’s also plenty of intuitive web design tools available to you for a price. If you have the time to devote to the process, building a website can be a rewarding endeavour. However, the boys at Rural Clicks are always available to do some of the heavy lifting for you, at a very reasonable price. Take a look at our packages and see if any of them sound like a good fit for you and your needs.
