Who NEEDS a website, really?

Before you start spending money with a fancy marketing/web design company (such as ourselves), why not ask yourself the question - does my business really NEED a website?

There is no doubt a website will:

• help you communicate with your customers better
• give you a platform to sell goods online
• help you learn more about what your customers are looking for (via an online marketing/advertising campaign)
• Get your brand and your products in front of more people, some of whom will otherwise never have found out about you.

So, you'll only need a website if you want to do these things, and you can only do these things effectively if you have a decent-looking website with content worth reading.

For us, each customer is unique, so we approach every project with an open mind, learning about your business before we make suggestions on what might be right for you.

We could impress you with some buzz words such as 'sliver marketing', ' e-strategies' and three-letter acronyms such as B2B, CRM and PPC but we'd rather you hired us to learn a bit more about the industry so you can make a reasoned judgement about what you need for your business.

Are we any good? We recommend you ask our customers! All we can tell you is we want to offer superlative value in all our services and we GUARANTEE customer satisfaction!

Content is King - the power of the written word

A great way to keep your website fresh and up-to-date is developing a 'nose' for a story.

Like a reporter at a local newspaper, you should be looking for an 'angle' for everything that happens in your company - your staff, your products, your customers - how are they changing? What is is new? What are people thinking and saying about your services? How can your website reflect what's going on?

As Rudyard Kipling wrote:

"I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who."

Even in the 21st Century, it is still these six honest serving men who will work for you to generate the content that will help make your website useful and interesting enough for your customers to visit and for the search engines to rank highly. (Incidentally, if you'd like us to handle the content generation too, you only have to ask - journalism was our thing before the internet came along!)

Have your seen your future?

Can you imagine a world where MOST purchases are made ONLINE?

If you can't, then maybe you need to be reminded that, way back in 2004, more than 22 million adults in the UK alone made an online purchase.

What will that number be in 2007..in 2008..? And where does that leave 'bricks & mortar' businesses?

Don't panic! At Krann, we believe that no matter what technology offers up, excellent customer service and effective marketing will continue to be the most important requirements for generating business success.

The Internet is a great way to make your business 'punch above its weight' in terms of marketing and 'getting closer' to your customers.

Aside from face-to-face selling, a good-looking website is an super way of stimulating AIDA - Attention, Interest, Desire and Action - in the minds of your customers. But after that, you need to take advantage of the extra sales enquiries a website can offer you - a website alone is not always enough to convert a sale.

At Krann, we want our customers to be successful – customer success is a measure of how good we are, and we want to be the best.

So, when you are ready to call us to design a website for your business, we recommend you also do the following :

• Make sure you have some quality content ready to put on the pages (If not, you'll also need to ask us to write some for you!)
• Then, when your website is up and running, find out from your customers whether they've visited it and how it affects their buying decisions. Customer feedback has never been so important.
• Finally, work hard on your personal time-management or delegation skills to ensure your website is updated and improved in some way every week. (e.g. If you can set aside one hour every week just to write about your business, then you can use this writing as content for your website and it will stay fresh and interesting for your future customers - it'll actually help you think about your business objectively and help you plan your business' growth)

We look forward to hearing from you soon. Give us a call now, invite us over and let's chat about the future...!

What about Google then?

We all use it to find stuff - but how can you use it so that your customers can find you?

Krann offers a very effective Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) service, helping you to get your website nearer the coveted No.1 position on Google's rankings.

How good are we? Read this article for an update.

If you'd like to know a bit more about SEO,we've got a new article about it on our Search Engine Optimisation page. Have a look at it by clicking on this sentence.