Your brand website is crucial to your business- it’s the first point of contact for consumers and delivers your unique brand promise. If consumers are uninterested in your brand, they become uninterested in your product. It’s as simple as that. Far too often companies make critical errors on their websites, hindering their web presence and their overall revenue.
I’m on social media….why do I need a website?
Businesses focusing on brand sites is becoming a rare sight these days with more and more businesses flocking to social media channels. However, a brand’s dot-com is still a vital element of a business’ overall image to consumers. Consumers will still look at a company’s website if they are interested in the product in an attempt to scope them out. Websites provide the primary source of product information. Consumers have been found to trust websites more often than any other source when researching products.
Common mistakes
A large majority of websites lag behind technology, and even those that have caught up with the times, still have poor skim value- preferring instead to fill their space with useless informaiton. Consumers do not want to be overwhelmed with piles of information to find the key details. By trying to encourage consumers to search through other information to find the necessities, you are more likely to find people give up rather than listen to what you have to say. Here are some common mistakes your potential consumers notice:
- Be careful when making general statements. Make sure you don’t alienate your consumer by appealing to only a certain demographic or geographic pool.
- Make sure the content is posted in the right context- social media channels do not work for the majority of information that should be on your company’s website. While social media channels are great for say, a quick tweet informing your followers of a sale, when consumers visit websites, they are generally looking to solve a problem- something social media sites were not intended for.
- Sell your product for what is actually is- don’t pretend to be a big brand if you’re a boutique chain.
- Always be sure to provide a direct link to the product (whether it be reservations or online shopping) on the main page to make sure that you streamline to process and get the consumer doing what you want them to do.
- Asethically, do not have a focal image on the main page- rather use multiple images to adequately convey your company’s product
- In addition to your main desktop website, be sure to streamline your mobile website (we’ve spoke about the importance of mobile access before)
Develop a realistic and sincere consumer experience
Braymark can help you develop better methods of collecting information about your hospitality business and show you how to best utilize that data with a Guest Experience Audit and our Total Feedback index reporting system. With the Total Feedback Index, you’ll have access to your data in real-time and the flexible reporting module allows you to customize your reports and segment the data to relevant staff.
