You can use your business website to increase sales at your bricks and mortar locations. 72.5% of the US population uses the Internet and they will use it to research a purchase even if the purchase will be made at a physical retail location. An effective business website design acts to answer questions and help the pre-sales process by answering questions and sales objections.

Even if your business does 100% of its business at a physical retail location, sales can be increased using a business website. According to Nielsen Online 80% of consumer electronic purchasers bought at a store whose website they visited first. 44% of pet food consumers researched info such as nutritional specs online.

1. Product listings: even if you don’t sell online, list product details so interested buyers can research and compare products. This way they arrive to your store ready to buy.
2. Contact info: post store hours, store location and an interactive map with driving directions.
3. FAQ area: include common questions that are asked by customers in person at your store location. This way your website can help answer the same questions 24/7.
4. Use Blogging and Social Media: By using blog marketing and other social media, you reach a whole new audience than your website alone will. Consider a Facebook page or encourage customers to review your business on social review sites like Yelp.com.
5. Traditional Media: When advertising in newspaper, radio, TV or direct mail, always include your website URL where interested consumers can learn more about what you offer.

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New business owners and companies starting their first business website have to decide what to name their website. This is a tough decision and it profoundly affects the business. What’s in a Domain Name? talks about what is important. But in most cases a business owner has to decide between using his company name or using keywords to attract the search engines attention.

For my business, I went through the same dilemma. My choice was to use DougWilliams.com as my primary business website and I turned WebDesignSEO.com as my primary blog website which uses my primary keywords. I strongly believe that the primary company website must be the “natural name” that people would type in even if they aren’t sure of your website address. Branding and ease of remembering takes precedence over keywords and the search engines.

Branding of your business is critical. The company name and the website should have the same name. I had one client who had a slightly different domain name from their company name and after some discussions I convinced them to change their company name to match their website.

Now if a company is just forming, I will usually try and get them to use keywords in the company name. So if a company is starting up a carpet cleaning business in Kalamazoo, I would suggest that they name the business Kalamazoo Carpet Cleaning and choose the domain Kalamazoocarpetcleaning.com (which is available, I checked). Combining the company name, keywords and the domain name all into one is the strongest possible position for a company.

Once you have your domain and have gone thru the website planning process, you are ready for business website design.

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