Often, you may think of your website simply as an online business card. It’s true that your website should provide vital information, but it’s capable of doing much more: driving conversions, bringing in revenue, and organizing other areas of your business. Here are three ways to build websites that will work hard for you:
Use Your Site’s Admin Area
As a website developer, I have seen the benefits of a powerful WordPress back-end admin area. If done right, your admin area can contain a lot of extra information to help you organize your business.
For example, we currently manage a client’s web dashboard that tracks all online and offline sales. Now, our client’s complete production process can be managed through its website, including viewing the production status of an order. In addition, the client’s monthly revenue is updated live on its WordPress dashboard.
Ways to Create a Powerful Dashboard
Customize the user functionality of the WordPress CMS. You can keep notes with important information in the database.
Track sales using an eCommerce platform (we use WP E-Commerce or WooCommerce), even if you are not running an online store on the front end of your website.
Use your website admin area as an internal message/communication center so all your staff members can stay informed and in contact.
Connect Features to Your Website
Chances are good your business needs to record data, or have access to social media / third party sites. We use WordPress, partly because of its flexibility in adding features and feeding information into a website through free plug-ins.
What can you do?
- Integrate your business’s reviews (Google, Yelp) into your website.
- Use a Dropbox [link]-to-WordPress integration to make it easy for an employee (whom you trust!) to take photos with a company phone or iPad, and have them automatically posted to the website.
- Record sales and revenue, and integrate coupons through eCommerce coupons.
- Build customized contact or newsletter forms.
- Provide social media updates from your WordPress back-end, have your site automatically push those to various social media sites, and gain followers.
If a plug-in does not work, your website developer can perform a custom integration to communicate unique information that will improve your website’s productivity. A plug-in or custom integration can add value to your website by helping your customers connect with your business and increase conversions.
Be creative with your customization to provide added value for your customers. For example, maybe you’re a local bike shop. With some programming help, you could use data from Strava to show how many miles your employees have ridden lately, or to showcase popular cycling routes in the area.
Let Your Website Log Incoming Phone Calls
For many of you, a phone call is the primary way you gain conversions. You need to keep track of how many phone calls are received and how many turn into customers. Some online phone services notify you when a phone call is received, like through the caller ID or duration of the call. For many of our clients, we have programmed notifications to log their calls. The user is then able to attach notes or comments into the phone log. Notes can be helpful if you get any calls that need follow-up, or multiple phone numbers from the same customer.
Keeping track of your phone calls can increase your awareness of your customers and how calls to your website are performing. If you are not getting conversions from phone calls, our marketing team can perform A/B testing to change the layout, content, or visuals to a more productive website design.
Creating visually appealing websites is only a minor component of my position as a website developer. Our primary goal is to make your website function to serve your customer best. After learning about your business, we customize features that help you navigate the data to build your business revenue. A great website can take your business far.