WEBSITE ADD ONS In association with Fireball Media

Orla O'Leary Sales & Marketing Director, Fireball Media

Changes occur all the time in business and according to Orla O'Leary so must your website

As with any forward thinking business, changes to company structure, personal, move of premises, products and services are to be expected. Marketing ploys change with the times and so too must your website.

A productive website needs to change to meet with client requirements and demands. Every company should actively allow for improvements on their website within their annual budget. A website should always be looked on as an online reflection of your business whether it is an E-commerce site, a brochure site, or a information site. Therefore it must be up to date with any other marketing ploys you are using.

A website site doesn’t need to be huge to begin with as you can add to it at any stage, the most important thing is that to begin with the website looks like and is a professional reflection of your business.

Page Add On

An example of this would be if your company has a new product or service to offer a client you will need to add this to your website. In some cases where a website was built on a budget the services or products might have been listed on the one page or over a few pages now is the time to give each product or service their own page. This will allow you to give more information on each product or service along with more imagery.

Stats Reports

All websites should have a Stats report, more so if it is an Ecommerce website. It will allow you to see how many hits (visits) your website is getting and what are the most popular pages. By giving each product or service its own page your company will have a clearer indication on which product or service is more popular. If you are getting visits to a page but no contact regarding that product or service then it will indicate that you may need to address the marketing structure of the product or service. Stats reporting is one of the very few ways for a company to track the effect its marketing strategies are having.

Ezine Newsletters

If a visitor has taken the time to look for your company online then already they are showing interest in your product or service. An interactive website, which creates repeat visits also creates larger potential for sales and company brand awareness for your business. An Ezine Newsletter is an ideal way to create an online relationship with potential and existing clients. An Ezine Newsletter can be created to suit the interest of a certain niche of your clients, let them tell you what they want to hear from you about when they subscribe. The Ezine is a micro version of your own website which is linked into your own website and with a Stats report you can track which Ezine created the most interest then compare it with sales online if you have an ECommerce section and on the floor sales. You can use an Ezine in so many ways; it can be to inform subscribers of new products begin launched online sales, in-house sales, online competitions, company news etc.

Online Polls

Another way to create repeat visits and to keep your website interactive is online polls. This can be introduced through an Ezine which would direct a subscriber to the voting area of the website. Alternatively your company could run an online pole in conjunction with a print advert again creating visits to your website. This will also enable you to get a feel for what visitors want and don’t want, online polling can be used in many types of websites.

Member's Area

Depending on the type of business you have then your company may wish to have a member’s area to the website which would be password protected. A type of business that can benefit from these areas would be a franchise business. The password protected area could be accessed be franchisees only each could have their own unique password for security reasons and for head office tracking proposes. The area could hold marketing tools, new marketing campaigns, product information, or logos. Each franchisee would be able to access the information once it was uploaded to the site from where ever their online access is. This is an example of one type of business but there are several businesses that can benefit from this add on.