UPDATE: This all in one website post was first published on 16 December 2020 and updated on 29 July 2021.
Your business needs a new website that attracts customers, gets noticed on Google and brings customers back. Do you hire a professional or use one of the many online tools out there to create your own?
Designers are expensive — small and medium-sized businesses need an all-in-one website kit that allows them to create and update a website on their own, with integrated social media and email marketing.
GoDaddy’s Website Builder is the all-in-one website tool entrepreneurs need to create their digital storefront.
It’s a next-generation website builder that helps entrepreneurs create an online presence that looks great — no tech skills required!
GoDaddy’s easy sitebuilder should help you connect with the growing number of Canadians who are now shopping online. The shift toward online retail has taken leaps and bounds, and if you want to keep up, your website will need to do some heavy lifting.
1. Searchability
Small businesses will live or die on Google. Search engines are often the first place that people go when they’re looking for goods or services. Knowing what people search for when they find businesses like yours will help you find your audience, but you also need to understand how Google bots evaluate and rank your site.
The first step in SEO optimization is making sure that Google notices your website. You want Google to index your main page, but you also want to submit an XML sitemap that will lead Google bots to your other pages, such as product and service pages that give customers more information and lead to a sale.
Website Builder auto-generates a sitemap for you.
It also helps with Google Maps integration, which is essential when it comes to reaching customers looking for businesses nearby, hours of operation and contact information.
Another technical factor that will affect your Google ranking is how fast your site loads. The importance of site speed is often overlooked, but it should be a factor in the early development of your site. Potential customers are less likely to convert on websites that take too long to load.
Google recently announced that to direct searchers to sites that provide a better user experience, as of 2021, site speed will officially become a ranking factor. Avoid things that will slow down your website like too many plugins, oversized images, and complex file formats.
Related: Introduction to Google Lighthouse
2. Great design
Ranking is the best way to improve traffic and make sure people find your website, but great design is how you get them to stay, explore and turn into customers. GoDaddy’s Website Builder makes it simple to build a good-looking website without any tech skills.
Get started quickly with 100+ templates tailored to your industry.
Different businesses need a different look, and you need a layout that reflects what you do. You can also use filters and photos from a free gallery (with the option to upload your own) that will make your business stand out and look unique – for all the right reasons.
A good all-in-one website kit will help your business look good online no matter what you do.
3. Insights and analytics
There’s no point to marketing in the dark. You need to know if what you’re doing is working, and that depends on your businesses’ goals. You need smart technology that recognizes what you’re trying to accomplish based on your stated goals and the industry you work in.
You should be able to monitor traffic, keep up with social media posts, and even manage appointment bookings from your website dashboard.
Suppose you want to know how your business compares to local competitors. In that case, GoDaddy Insight crunches data from across the internet to give you an Insight Score and an Action Plan for improving your performance.
4. Social media integration
Canadian consumers are among the most likely to visit a social network to do research before they make a purchase. Businesses that want to connect with potential and repeat customers have to stay connected through social media.
About 86% of Canadians follow brands on one or more social media channels.
The majority (59%) follow companies on Facebook, followed by Instagram (27%), Twitter (17%) and YouTube (16%). Many also shop directly from social media, where Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram lead the crowd, respectively.
GoDaddy’s Website Builder helps you update your Facebook page with just a few clicks, as well as connect to Instagram through the dashboard to monitor activity. Using Over by GoDaddy, you can easily design eye-catching social media posts and infographics for your website. You don’t have to be a graphic designer to make compelling, professional content on your website or social media.
Then there’s email marketing, one of the best tools at your disposal for bringing in repeat customers. It’s a cost-effective way to target previous customers. GoDaddy’s all-in-one website solution allows you to organize your mailing list according to purchase history, meaning you can customize your message to resonate better with recent and not-so-recent customers alike.
5. Content marketing
Photo: NeONBRAND on Unsplash
The days when you could set it and forget it are over. Your online presence needs to stay up-to-date. For some businesses, that means constantly keeping their social media accounts fresh. For other businesses, the best way to stay relevant is with a blog.
A blog is an opportunity to provide more detailed insights into your products and services or your industry more generally. It’s a way to add personality to your online presence and build a relationship with customers. When they shop online, Canadian buyers do more research and take more time before they commit. A blog is your opportunity to give them a feast of information, so they feel more confident about choosing you.
A blog also helps push your SEO strategy. You can answer more specific questions than you might want to on product or service pages, as well as provide an ongoing, up-to-date perspective on what you do and what consumers are looking for.
Launch and grow your venture with our all-in-one website builder
An all-in-one website builder should help you talk to search engines, design a site that looks great, find out how you can improve traffic, stay active on social media and improve your content marketing. Make your online presence active, effective and memorable.
