The Child Care Business Owner Institute

5 Steps to a Great Website!

 Your Website Just Can’t be Good It has to be Great!!~ Shama Kabani

I created my first website for my childcare business in 1999. The website provided basic information about my program including: the location, hours, rates and photos of my program. In fact, the website was free, but I didn’t get much business from the site. There were many reasons why this site did not work for me, however, I prefer to tell you about the site that did work for me.

In 2003, I registered the domain name www.learningdays.com  for $19.00. It was a great investment for my business and is still paying off. I also signed up for web hosting with www.samsclub.com for only $5.00 a month.

After setting up my site, I was clueless about how to create a site that would attract visitors. Over time, I learned how to add content, how to structure the site, make it a very informative site and most of all attract more families to enroll their children in my program.

For online marketing or website building tips, be sure to check our my a e-book titled, ” An Online Marketing Plan.” One of the resources that I quoted in the book includes a book written by Shama Kabani, titled: “The Zen of Social Marketing.”

The ebook is loaded with great social media marketing tips that will drive traffic to your business. In the second chapter of the  book Kabani wrote: ” Why Your Website Can’t Just Be Good- it has to be Great!” She also includes the five elements of a Great website and they are as follows:

1.Design-When a website looks great, it sends the impression that the company or product is great. Keep in mind that your website may be your first chance to make an impression upon your site visitors, so make it a great one!

2.Structure– Have you ever been to a website and didn’t know where to start or how to check out? While structuring or restructuring your website, be sure that your visitors can easily  navigate through your website.  A confused consumer may easily say no to your service or product.

3.Content-According to Shama Kabani, Content is King!  More over, it is the heart of your website. The first purpose of a blog or website is to educate and build expertise. A really great site offers content in the following forms: written articles, audio and video. This is a great way to meet the learning preferences of your site visitors.

4.Optimization-  is a marketing tool that allows any online user to get more clicks in their web copy writing efforts for their website by improving the search engine results in the Web. Moreover, make sure that search engines can read your website. This is a great way to attract website visitors from major search engines such as Google.

5.Maintenance Your website needs to be maintained the same way that we maintain our physical building. Content needs to be changed, design needs to be updated and items may need to be moved around. I suggest that a website be reviewed 2-3 times a week to track visitors with a scheduled monthly maintenance plan that includes:  website visitors feedback.

I hope that you have been inspired to create a great website that will attract visitor, turn them into consumers and eventually transform them into customers. I wish you much success with your website!

For more marketing tips, check out my Marketing 101 toolkit!

Source:

2010. Kabani, Shama. The Zen of Social Media Marketing. Pages, 21-22