Why it is still important to keep your business website current
Embracing the challenge of re-designing our new website by Susan Binnersley
A recent study has confirmed that in 2019 3.2 billion people have a social media account (Source: Emarsys). Given the number and diverse nature of social media platforms that are now available, providing instant and direct access to your organisation, are business websites still relevant in 2019?
We believe that the answer to this question is yes and as such our team have invested their time and energy in re-designing our website with a local web company and we are really pleased with the result https://www.h2h.uk.com/
We believe that as a b2b organisation a website is still relevant today as it enables us to:
- demonstrate our expertise in our field
- have complete creative control to illustrate what we do
- provide interesting content for new and existing clients
- extend our organic reach in the sector
- provide support and answers for our customers
What challenges did we face along the way?
It has been an interesting journey and we have had to ask some thought-provoking questions about our organisation in order to create a vibrant, exciting new webpage which is engaging and showcases how we can make a positive difference to working lives.
Some of the more stimulating conversations have revolved around trying to convey ‘what do we actually do’ to our audience.
- What we do is rich, diverse and spans 6 service streams – so how can we be succinct?
- We are really proud of the tangible value we add to our customer organisations and the people who work in them – so how do we show this with humility and integrity?
- We receive some truly amazing and heart-warming feedback about the impact we have had on people and their organisations – so how do we share this without breaching confidences?
- h2h is all about human to human – so how do we ensure this human touch comes across in a professional manner without being either too corporate or too cheesy?
What did we learn?
As our new site went live this week here is some of our learning.
- Choose a website partner who gets you and cares about the end result. We interviewed a few potential partners and have been really happy with. https://www.bowhouse.co.uk/ Right from our first meeting we were impressed by the questions they asked to understand us, reassuring us that as we offer bespoke solutions – so do they. They were referred to us by another business who said, “we didn’t use them but wish we had.” Thanks for the referral, we are pleased we did.
- It’s much easier to say what you definitely don’t like than what you do like, a good partner will be understanding (and tolerant) of this.
- Our thoughts and ideas evolved with the build, so investing time to share and shape these with colleagues is time well spent.
- Launch or delay launch? This is a web site not an Apollo mission, so even though there may be tweaks and changes we would individually like to make, recognise that you can still evolve it once it is live.
- Have good administrative training and access to keep it fresh and current after it is launched.
We hope that you enjoyed hearing about why we think that there is still a need for a business website in 2019 and about some of things that we have learnt along the way. We are really proud of the end result and we think it promotes our personable approach and core values of Respect, Integrity, Professionalism and Enthusiasm.
Have a look and see what you think https://www.h2h.uk.com/
