9-Step Checklist to Managing Your Website and Online Presence
You’ve spent time building your online presence. Perhaps you’ve created social media accounts and even dabbled into social media advertising. But one thing’s for sure, if you’re not keeping track of what’s going where, it’s impossible to manage your overall influence. You also want an online presence that maximises your sales. We’ve developed a 9-step checklist to help you manage your website and online presence:
Step 1: Familiarise yourself with best practices
As much as it’s important to be unique, you need to familiarise yourself with how your industry is and should be represented online. Do an online search of similar companies in your niche just to have a look at what they’re doing. Never copy someone else’s style, but only learn from their methods.
You also want to read up on legal issues such as consumer protection, advertising and selling regulations, copyright, data protection and libel laws. Knowing these rules will help you to create the right content for your website and social media pages.
Step 2: Review your current online presence
If you’ve already created an online presence, it’s important to review it. Review what you’re posting online. In addition, review your audience. Are they still active on the social media sites you are using?
Lastly, you want to review your overall message. Is this what you want to put out to your audience? What do you want to be known for?
Step 3: Design and build your website
The fun part begins. Work with a web developer to create the right website for your business. Before you start developing your website, you should decide on your content and overall marketing message.
Decide which tabs you want to show on your navigation menu e.g. home, contact, products, blog etc. Then, decide what content will go on each page.
Hire a web developer or let us know if you would like our help as we have a range of Virtual Assistants available.
Step 4: Set up a blog on your website
A blog is beneficial to drive the right people straight from search engines to your website. If you use the right keywords and do SEO right, you will find that people will start coming to your website, read a blog and then sign up for your services.
A blog tells the world that you are an expert in the field. You know what you’re talking about. It also helps you to offer free stuff in return for an email signup or blog share.
Make sure that you have a written a couple of blogs before you launch your website. This is to make sure that there is enough content when people visit your site in the beginning.
Step 5: Create a newsletter for your website
A newsletter helps you to keep the connection with your clients going. It is also a chance to advertise some of your latest products. Mailchimp and Aweber are some of the popular tools that people use.
Step 6: Sell your products online
Make sure there’s a way for people to buy products on your website. They shouldn’t have looked all over your site for it either. Make shopping on your website easy by using a plugin such as WooCommerce.
Step 7: Create a landing page or two
Landing pages work well to get a purchase or sign up for a specific product. It allows your reader to focus on one page of information without getting distracted by other pages or sidebars.
Choose a product you want to focus on, create a landing page for that product and then drive people to the page through targeted emails, posts and ads.
Step 8: Install the best plugins for your website
Besides the WooCommerce plugin, there are other plugins that you will need to keep your website running, fast and secure. Here is a list of plugins that every website should consider.
Step 9: Track your performance
Finally, track your performance across all social media platforms and across your website as well. This can help you to focus on products that sell well and maximise on cross-selling opportunities. To analyse your performance on your website, use Google Analytics. For your social media channels, use the built-in analytics.
