In today’s digital world, your company must have a website. Not only that, your site needs to be fully optimized for SEO and mobile, consist of fresh quality content, be easy to navigate and user friendly, and be professionally designed.

Though the list of things your site needs to be fully effective can go on and on, ensuring that it has the essential components can literally mean the difference between higher profits or struggling to survive in the competitive business world. Your website could be your greatest tool, if you use it correctly.

Here are five ways your company site can either make or break your sales.

Who You Are

Your company site is likely the first place prospects will go to in order to check you out. It’s your place to shine. People are now more interested in more than just price and features. They actually care about the companies they purchase from, so let the world know who you are. Clearly state what you offer. Provide information you think prospects will be looking for. Make sure your location, phone number, and email address are all up to date and prominently displayed.

One of the first steps to getting prospects to buy from you is to build trust, and this starts with having clear, succinct, and accurate information about your company. I know I’ve personally lost trust in a business because their website’s office hours didn’t reflect when they were actually open. I’ve also moved on to a competitor’s site more often than I can count because a company’s site was simply too ambiguous and I couldn’t figure out what they did or what they could offer me.

User Experience

In today’s world, everyone wants instant access to the information they’re looking for. If your site is cluttered, disorganized, and just downright confusing, you’re going to lose out on a lot of potential sales. No one is going to spend several minutes trying to find what they’re looking for on your site. They’ll go straight to your competitor’s site to find the answers to their questions. Use dropdowns in your navigation menu, have clear headings, and add a search bar for ease of use. Wasting your visitor’s time is sure to cost you the sale.

Generating Leads

You might get some visitors typing in your company site name straight into the search bar, but the majority of visitors will come to find your site through various channels, like Google searches and social media. If you’re not doing anything to generate leads to your website, you’re going to have a tough time making sales off of it.

But if you optimize your site for SEO, continuously add content that search engines can crawl, share that content on social media, and post your website address everywhere you can think of, your salespeople will have a full pipeline of qualified leads to follow up on that are coming straight from your website.

Shorten the Sales Cycle

The sales process has changed. Now, consumers want to be in charge. They want to go online and perform their own research before coming to a decision. It’s up to you to ensure that you’re the one providing these leads with the information they seek. The more you can help leads and prospects move down the sales funnel, by providing relevant and valuable content, the more you can shorten the cycle and close more deals.

Reputation

Though your company is more than just your website, believe it or not, your site could make or break your reputation. It only takes visitors a few seconds to decide, based on your company site, whether you’re professional, trustworthy, credible, and worth purchasing from. A badly designed site or one that’s never updated can severely damage your reputation, and in turn, cost you the sale.