"The Little Voice of Vista": How to create an attractive official website
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Hello everyone, I’m Vista, nice to meet you in the air.
In yesterday’s program, I talked to you about How to create a content calendar. Someone left a message and told me that they were struggling with how to generate content, and then they heard this episode, which was very helpful! Someone also told me that she and her partner are preparing in advance according to the content calendar plan, and it feels really good!
Today, I would like to continue the topic of content production and website operation, and share with you how to create an attractive official website? Also, what details do you need to pay attention to when running an official website?
When it comes to official website, many people may frown and immediately show a lack of interest. I found that many friends do not have a correct understanding of the official website, and even have some stereotypes… They think that the official website is just filled with stereotyped or outdated information. Many people even ask: “Do we still need to spend a lot of time to set up an official website for the company? Isn’t it better to have a fan page?”
In fact, there are many benefits to establishing an official website. It not only helps your company establish a stronghold on the Internet, but also helps with content marketing and publicity. It can also communicate business philosophy and vision to the outside world, create a brand story and win social recognition, and then dialogue with more potential customers.
Literally speaking, the words official website demonstrate credibility and authority, and are also the engine for external communication and marketing of the company’s name. For example, if you are a fan of the Mayday band, you can search on Google and you will immediately find more than 15.6 million search results. But here comes the problem… How can you read through so much information? Moreover, is the information above worthy of trust by fans? I think that at this time, only by connecting to the official website operated by Believe Music can we be sure to get the latest news about the Mayday Band.
In fact, the purpose of the official website is not only to promote ideas and share information, but also to do business! More importantly, operating an official website with a specific domain name can accumulate goodwill and trust on the Internet, which is not only beneficial to search engine optimization, but also facilitates internal management and control. Of course, for fans or customers, it is actually more secure to search for information or contact customer service staff through the official website.
On the other hand, although social media such as Facebook fan pages and Instgram are convenient, they are not our home court after all. The fans and related data on them are only lent to us by Facebook. In many cases, we still have to look at other people’s faces. Therefore, if you want sustainable operations, it is still important to have your own home court. In my opinion, a better way is to focus on the official website, and then cooperate with the operation of different platforms and channels such as blogs, [fan pages] (https://www.facebook.com/vista.tw), [YouTube channels] (https://www.youtube.com/c/VistaCheng/videos), societies or e-newsletters.
For a company or organization, the greatest significance of the existence of an official website is not only to display the brand image, but also to shoulder the important responsibility of communicating with potential customers and fans. Yang Fei, the author of the book “Traffic Pool” once mentioned that the brand is the largest traffic pool, and the official website is the most important brand contact point between the company and customers.
The operating logic of the official website is actually not much different from that of ordinary websites. The main operating logic can be divided into the following three levels. You may wish to refer to it!
The first level: information organization
The reason why many visitors visit the official website of a company or organization is simply to inquire about the company profile and product information. Therefore, when we want to build our own official website, we should also sort out all this information, and it is best to organize and manage it by category. Of course, I would also recommend that you plan in advance, add tags and keywords to each web page, and arrange clear and appropriate movement lines to facilitate search and browsing by netizens. In addition, it is best to submit the site map of your site to mainstream search engines such as Google, Baidu, and Bing. This will also help perform SEO, which is the so-called search engine optimization.
The second level: message update
You know, the official website is not a hodgepodge. Don’t think that just putting some historical information, important events or product information about your company will be fine! For an official website to be able to continue to be effective, it not only needs a lot of information on it, but also needs dedicated people to be responsible for its operation and management. In addition to regularly updating your company’s information, don’t forget that the official website is the most important brand contact point with the target audience, so it is important to understand the motivations and needs of visitors at all times.
For example, Acer Computer’s official website does a good job! After connecting to their website, you can immediately see that the navigation bar at the top of the page has four major units, namely Acer Store, Home, Business, and Service Support, which allows visitors to quickly find relevant web page units based on their needs. Moreover, the company’s website adopts responsive web design and also takes into account the needs of mobile device users, which is also worthy of recognition.
The third level: customer service
Speaking of customer service, this is also one of the most common roles played by official websites. I suggest that in addition to providing complete consulting solutions and services, the operators of the official website should also arrange for dedicated personnel to respond to calls, letters and other customer service tasks. There are even many good cloud customer service solutions on the market (for example: Intercom, Zendesk, etc.), which are also very suitable to consider using together!
In addition to the above three operational logics, most official websites usually have four elements, namely company introduction, product information, contact channels and accompanying reference information. When you start planning the structure of your official website, I would suggest that you first refer to websites with similar attributes at home and abroad according to the industry your company is in, to see what kind of structure and content elements other companies have adopted? Then, outline the site map of your official website, which is the so-called sitemap.
Here is another interesting piece of information to share with you. As far as the official website is concerned, do you know which page has the highest traffic? Well, that’s right, it’s the homepage. I think this is not difficult to understand. So, besides the homepage, which page has the second highest traffic? According to foreign surveys, the answer is the “About Us” page. This answer is actually not surprising, right? Because most visitors usually come with questions or curiosity when they visit an official website! Therefore, if you can organize your company’s development history, team members, important events, and even product information and catalogs in advance, you can save these visitors a lot of valuable time!
In addition to the four major elements mentioned above, what details do we need to pay attention to when building an official website? Here are a few key points to share with you:
The first key point: give the official website a clear positioning
As the name suggests, the official website is a website set up to represent a certain identity. For an enterprise, it is natural to first define what services its official website provides? To which target audiences are you communicating? What kind of interactions do you hope netizens can have after coming to the official website? Only by clarifying these key points first can we give the official website a clear and definite positioning.
The second focus: speed up the loading speed of the official website
Because we live in this fragmented era, everyone’s attention has become a very scarce currency, so if the website loading speed is too slow, people may not have the patience to wait. Moreover, Google will also include website loading speed in the evaluation. If your website’s speed is too slow, it will not be conducive to search engine optimization! In addition, due to the advent of the mobile era, cross-device browsing must also be considered when designing the official website. It is best to support RWD, which is the so-called [responsive web design] (https://awoo.ai/zh-hant/blog/rwd-website-seo/).
The third focus: Provide a specific and unique [value proposition](https://wiki.mbalib.com/zh-tw/value proposition)
The so-called value proposition not only includes the benefits provided to consumers, but also includes the company’s attitude and views towards society and human beings. Regarding the establishment of a website, companies need to think not only about exposure and publicity, but also about what obvious benefits can be provided to the target audience?
The fourth key point: Construct a clear website navigation design
When it comes to the official websites of general companies, they are actually not the focus of interest to ordinary people, or websites that they visit frequently. Netizens usually visit with a purpose - perhaps they want to learn about the latest developments of the company, collect specific information, or want to know the latest product information, etc. After understanding everyone’s needs, we should try our best to provide clear guidance so that the public can quickly click on the picture to find the web page or related information they want to browse.
The first priority when building an official website is user experience, not just aesthetics. In other words, it is not enough to design a beautiful layout. We should also listen to the voices of many visitors, understand their needs and motivations for visiting, and then provide considerate services.
Finally, I would like to summarize it for you. If you want to build a high-quality official website, you usually must have the characteristics of four indicators: sensory, cognitive, action and emotion. In addition to conveying information through rich videos, graphics, and text, we must also be able to make visitors understand the brand value between the lines, and then take specific actions such as purchasing, registering, or filling out forms. Finally, we can allow visitors to establish a long-term and stable emotional connection with us.
Today, we talked about a lot of issues related to building and operating an official website. We hope it will be of some help to you! If you have any questions, please leave a message to discuss with me!
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Further reading
- “Vista’s Little Voice”: Have you started writing your “Achievements List”
- “Vista’s Little Voice”: Vista Reading 2/13/2022 - 2/19/2022
- “Vista’s Little Voice”: How to create a colorful blog
