Your website is often the first contact clients will have with your business. Paul Harrison sits down with Romany Thresher of Romany Thresher.com to get her top three insights on the process on getting the most out of your website.
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Romany Thresher

Insight 1: Your website is your shop window
A website is the perfect space for you to market your business. Make sure your site is professionally designed with relevant and targeted information. Most importantly build your website with the end user, your client, at the forefront of your mind. Your client is looking for ease of use, convenience and information on how you can provide them with benefits and solutions.

Insight 2: Choosing the right platform
I’m a huge fan of WordPress for a number of reasons but mainly because it is cost effective for anyone who owns or is starting up a small business. It integrates well with social media sites, works well with Google and most importantly it is mobile and tablet friendly which is ultimately where the web is headed.

Did you know 57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site, whilst 40% say they turned to a competitors site after a bad mobile experience?

You can easily test if your website is mobile friendly with Google’s GoMo tester.

Insight 3: Know your customers
If you don’t know who your customers are, how are you going to write content for your website and social media activities? You need to know what your customer wants and how you are going to solve their problems and communicate with them in a language they understand. All your customer is really interested in, is how you are going to give them solutions to their problems, they are not interested in how long you’ve been in business, or how your good are imported.

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Brian Francis

Q&A: Romany Thresher answers Brian Francis’ questions on creating a website.

Brian Francis is a UK-based South African who runs his business Identiteit and is keen to know more about the options that are out there as far as websites go

What is a domain?
You will be surprised by how many domains are not registered to the rightful owner – and I’ve seen a few people lose their entire website because of this. Your domain name is like the title deeds to your property, it is your online street address. Make sure it is registered to you and not your web host or web developer.

I want to be able to manage my own website
Great, and I encourage people to do this. WordPress is very user friendly, you don’t need any coding knowledge to publish your own content and it has the ability to function as a website and a blog.

Is WordPress affordable?
Yes, very affordable. WordPress is free and the cost to you is web hosting, your domain registration and a web developer to help you get the right look and feel.
 
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