You and your business can’t ignore the importance of having a strong online presence, since 97% of consumers use the internet to research products and services in their local area</a>. Since so many consumers turn to online sources when looking for a business’ information, your business needs to put its best foot forward when it comes to maintaining an online presence. Not only does a high quality website attract new customers and provide information for existing ones, a clean, professional site can also attract the right kinds of potential employees—which makes having a great website essential for any HR department.

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Why does my business need a website?

1.       Gives a good first impression

A well-executed website should be a hub of information designed to attract the interest of customers, suppliers, partner companies, existing and potential employees. Your company’s website is the first point of contact for almost 90% of people, so you want to make sure your first impression is the right one.

2. Allows you to rank in search engine queries

Having a website allows your business to appear as a result in people’s online searches. For example, if your pet insurance business doesn’t have a website, and customers in your area are searching online for affordable pet insurance, your business won’t show up as an option for them to explore since you don’t have a website. However, having a website allows you to appear in your customers’ search results, which is hugely important since, like mentioned earlier, so many customers find businesses online.

3. Allows you to become an expert in your field

If you create unique, useful, relevant content on your website, you will quickly become a resource to your customers, and thus, position yourself as an expert in your industry. That’s great news for HR professionals, since having a great reputation means attracting high quality employees.

Top Tips for Creating a Professional Website

Create Objectives

Before you start building any sort of website, you need to identify the goals of the site. Other objectives could include growing your customer database, attracting talented employees, or creating a showcase for your unique selling proposition. 

You also need to make sure that one of your objectives is to communicate all of your basic business information, like address, contact info, services/products offered, etc. Providing this basic information will keep your customers informed and make their search process easier.

Focus on Your Homepage

The homepage of your website is most likely to be the page people land on first and should therefore provide instant answers to the most common questions a customer, supplier or potential employee will have about your business. It is also where you establish trust, a critical factor in getting visitors to stay on your site, look for more information or register further interest.

Include an ‘About’ Page

An About page is essential to telling your story as a company. The most successful companies have a consistent message about their culture, who they are, and what they do. People buy from businesses they trust, and your About page is a great place to start building that trust.

Include a Careers Page

Adding a careers page is also an invaluable feature that can aid HR planning and processes. Post latest vacancies and details of how to apply. It’s also helpful to include information about the employee culture at your company. What do you employees do for fun? Where are they from? What are some of their backgrounds? This will give potential employees a better understanding of what it’s like to work at your company. One of the best examples of this is Airbnb’s life page, which details exactly what it’s like to work at that company—including information on company retreats and bring-your-dog-to-work-day.

 Include a Contact Page

Again, people buy from business they trust, and no one will trust your business if you don’t have any contact information posted. Customers want to know who they can turn to if they have shipping issues, need to return something, or have questions about your product/service.

Add Quality Content

With the basic pages established, the next step in setting up your site is to create and deliver good content. You can do that by creating a blog that gives insights into industry trends, developing video content, or creating helpful tools for customers. Ultimately, whatever content you choose to create, it needs to provide value to your customers and employees. The more interesting your content, the more likely visitors will continue to interact with your site and even help you spread the word.

Create a Quality User Experience

A good website provides quick and easy access to data, audio, video and other information. If it is too slow to load, crashes repeatedly or fails to work when accessed via a mobile device, users will look elsewhere. If you don’t have an IT department don’t worry, there are a variety of cloud based content delivery networks, known as CDN services, available to help you improve website load times, video streaming, live broadcasting and site availability, pushing your messages out worldwide in an instant. This can be particularly useful for business operating on a global scale, for example when hosting conferences, recruitment drives or corporate training programs.

However you choose to put your best foot forward in business, a digital footprint will help create a direct path to your door. Do your research, choose the best methods for your business, and you could reap the rewards for years to come.