7 Ways To Use Your Website

By Nathan Lyle (Web Maestro) - January 30th, 2010

Assuming you either already have a website, or have decided that your business or organization really does need a website, here are eight ways (in no particular order) that you might use your website to go beyond the common "brochure style" online presence.

Hold a Contest

There are many reasons this can be a good idea. It will help increase traffic to your website, and it will cause other people to promote you and your website. If your contest is interesting, you could even get free coverage from local media. Obviously having a contest usually means giving something away, but you can be creative in what the prize is, and you can very likely get much more exposure per dollar than you would with standard advertising. Save Money on Advertising

Create an easy to find section on your website that lists special offers and coupons. Any kind of promotion you run, put the details on your website. You aren't limited to a newspaper ad page size, or a 30 second radio or tv spot, make it look good and get your point across. Then, when you advertise in other media, buy the shortest spot or smallest ad size possible and push your website. Tell people to visit your website to save money. You can greatly reduce the money you spend on ads, while at the same time generating much more traffic to your website.

Earn Trust by Proving You're The Expert

Because of the Internet, people can buy just about anything from just about anywhere. So why should anyone buy from you? Price isn't always the determining factor. Proximity and support can compete with price. If a product breaks or needs servicing, it's always much easier to deal with someone next door than with having to pay ever increasing shipping costs and talking to support call centers in India. Use your website to emphasize your location and involvement with the community. Post free information, articles, links, and anything else that you can that helps show that you're the expert on your products.

Cut Office Costs

How much money do you spend on printing forms, applications, and other documents? How many of those could better be converted to PDF format and posted on your website? Even if you don't want to purchase the full version of Adobe Acrobat, there are free PDF conversion applications available online that will let you convert directly from Word or other office programs, or scan from printed copies. You can have pages on your website with publicly available documents, or even a password protected section for just staff to access. Don't keep spending money reproducing your employee manual, go digital!

Provide Alternate Method of Accepting Payment

Studies have shown that people are most likely to spend money when they can do so with a credit card. Debit cards add to the convenience. Even if you are not interested in selling your products online, you can easily set up a method of payment that would let people pay invoices through your website. Services like PayPal have no setup fee or monthly charges, costing you only a small percentage of each transaction. More comprehensive services like Authorize.Net allow you to complete the full transaction directly on your website while depositing funds directly into your bank account. (Many services are available, be sure to compare costs and support options.) Ultimately, what it comes down to is that the more ways you offer for someone to pay you, the more likely they are to actually pay you.

Sell Advertising

This one depends on whether you actually have any visitor traffic on your website to speak of. If you do, you may want to consider monetizing that traffic. Find other businesses who complement yours and offer advertising space on your website. Print out monthly statistic reports to demonstrate the visibility their ad would get. Many statistics packages also allow you to track how people leave your website, so if they click a link on an ad, you can also demonstrate those numbers. At the very least, you might find that you can offset your hosting and website development costs.

Collect Feedback

If you have thick enough skin, allow people to leave anonymous feedback through your website. You're likely to get some annoying and useless messages, but you'll also likely get some interesting insights that may let you make some improvements to your business. Not only is this a possible gold mine, if you're the type who wants to always improve how you do things, but it also creates an image of being open and personable. People want to be heard when they have something to say. One of the biggest mistakes a company can make is to not include contact information on their website. Make it easy for people to communicate with you!