What’s the Point? 3 Main Purposes of a Website

This is one of the first questions I ask my new website clients. What is the purpose behind your website? What results are you hoping to see by investing in a website? Sometimes we get blank stares… This is the blog for you!

There are several different types of websites, each requiring a different plan of attack to get the desired results. Whether you’re looking for an Informational website, E-commerce, or Lead Generation, a website can be a very useful marketing and sales tool when approached with your goals in mind.

Over the next few weeks we’ll focus on the different types of websites and offer some tips for how to get the most out of them for your company.

This week: The Informational “Brochure” Website

These websites are usually the most basic. You know you need to be online because the Internet is not going away, but you don’t care to start selling your product online and you have no intention of starting a newsletter or marketing campaign aimed at all those Internet folks. You are just making sure your information is available if they are looking. This is a great beginner site, just for getting your feet wet in the World Wide Waters.

What a Brochure Website should include:

Like I said, this is just the basics, so keep it simple, precise, and to the point.

• Company Name and the Industry that you are a part of.
• Even if your logo spells this out, make sure that you include this information on your homepage as well, search engines cannot read the information on your logo so you need to tell them what you do too.
• Services or Products that you offer.
• What do you do? If you were creating a tri-fold brochure, what would it include? That’s what should go here.
• Who are you? This could include a brief history of your company, bios of a few key personnel, and a quick recap of what makes your business great to work with. This is also a great place to list a company mission statement, vision statement, or values.
• Contact and Basic Business Information. Phone number, address, email address or form, business hours, Facebook link, any way that you would like a customer to be able to find you, should be listed here.

That’s it. Fill in these four basic pages and you can have a brochure website in no time at all.

Not sure how to get started building a website? Check out our SmartStart™ program for more information!