Many businesses plan a new marketing strategy as one of their year-end procedures. A website is an inseparable part of your business and should take centre stage in your planning. A crippling website will hinder your marketing efforts. If you want to make the most out of the next 12 months, don‘t treat it as a mere expense. Here’s why a business website is an investment that will accelerate your business in 2019.
It will lead to profits and future achievements
A website has the potential to fulfil your vision on many levels. It’s relatively cheap to run and provides a great return on investment. You can use it as an efficient customer support hub for your business. It’s an amazing asset for customer retention and a highway to growth. Establishing your online presence will get more eyes on your brand and generate leads.
Even if your business focuses on brick and mortar sales, these days it’s the website that serves as your true storefront. When executed properly, your site can become your main lead generating tool, as it works for you 24/7. Because of that, it’s also one of the best channels for building brand awareness.
It will improve your sales workflow
You can integrate most of your external tools with your website. Consider the aforementioned customer support. Live chats are on the rise and over half of the customers prefer instant contact channels.
And while we’re at customers, your business website can integrate with a customer relationship management system (CRM). CRM integration automates the process of gathering customer data, shortens the sales cycle and improves your productivity.
It gets all your customer details in one place which exponentially increases the information flow and efficiency for multiple teams. You can see the e-mail and live chat history to further enhance the customer support aspect of your website. Your employees can access these logs to improve the response time to enquiries.
A newsletter service integration allows you to send custom e-commerce transaction confirmations, as well as send targeted follow-up emails based on your customers’ interests. It also integrates with your CRM, importing their details from the management system.
It will become the hub of your marketing strategy
Oftentimes your business website is the first point of contact with your brand for your visitors. Because of that, a brilliant marketing campaign and exquisite branding might fall flat when displayed on a crippling website.
Social media integration is a good way of letting your customers stay in touch with your business. A lack of social media follow and share buttons are almost a flaw these days. The former should appear on virtually every website while the latter is mandatory if you’re creating content on your site.
Another huge social media integration is social login. The majority of users prefer social login as opposed to providing their personal data to create a new account. It’s a smooth way to shorten the registration process and it’s almost guaranteed to increase your conversion rates.
Blogs are a great way to complement your marketing strategy. Not only do they provide fresh content, which both Google and your visitors love, but also generate social media shares and help you collect e-mails if you opt to launch a newsletter campaign for your articles.
It will provide insights into conversions
A website equipped with analytic tools reports back its effectiveness and the success of your marketing efforts. You can also follow the incoming traffic from social media campaigns, advertisers and referrals. It not only gives you an invaluable insight into the conversion rate of your web traffic but also provides an easy way to estimate their value.
Features like heatmaps and session recordings allow you to use your business website as a benchmark for your visitors’ needs. You can see their interactions on your site and establish whether they found what they were looking for. With that kind of insight, you can not only tweak your website but also make educated choices for your business.
A well-built business website works to your benefit. It helps you grow your business by increasing the traffic, building brand awareness and converting visitors to clients, proving to be a great return on investment. 
This article comes courtesy of Nerd Cow, the full-service London web agency.
