Expert Author Gihan Perera
With all the fuss and hype about social media, it's easy to forget the importance of your Web site, and that's a mistake. You can use social media to get their attention, but it's still your Web site that makes the sale. In fact, your site is now even more important than ever before.
From an Internet marketing perspective, all your Internet marketing efforts have the ultimate goal of leading people to your site. Of course, it takes time to build relationships on social media, and you won't succeed with blatant advertising. But keep in mind that ultimately, all these efforts usually don't lead to direct sales. For example, although Facebook would like their users to do everything there and never leave Facebook, that simply isn't the case in practice. Your potential customers connect with you, interact with you, engage with you, and eventually trust you on Facebook, but they will still go to your Web site to do business with you.
The quality of Web sites has also improved dramatically, and that has raised your customers' expectations. Of course, there are still plenty of bad sites, but there are also a lot of good sites, and Internet users know the difference. It's no longer good enough to just have a site; it needs to be a good site now. It certainly doesn't need all the bells and whistles, but it must look professional, it must make users feel comfortable interacting with it, and it must lead them on a clear path to take action.
Of course, your potential customers also have so many other options available now, so you have much greater competition online to hold their interest. Even after you convince them to go to your site, you still have to work hard to keep their attention and interest. If you haven't thought about them and their needs, they will click the Back button instantly and go somewhere else. In the past, they didn't necessarily have a "somewhere else" to go, but now they do.