Website applications for business

[MatthewGarcia]

A corporate website can have various purposes, performing a number of internal and external functions to help boost the success of your business. Internal functions are related to the actions users take when already on the website, while external functions serve to bring clients to the site, i.e. they are related to how the website appears on other portals, such as search engines.

Internal business functions
Internal business functions relate to how your corporate website presents information to users and guides them towards conversion, i.e. the moment when a user becomes a (potential) client by ordering something or contacting the company. This is achieved through the use of web design tools, such as content layouts, call-to-action elements, landing pages and many others. A quality website ensures that a potential client is easily able to find what he or she is searching for, and is then guided towards making a purchase or placing an order.

Another important function is to create a pleasant general user experience. A user is more likely to want to become a client if he/she enjoys the website in general. This is also linked to the fact that an abundance of interesting product-related information makes clients feel a lot more confident about their actions — they feel that in purchasing your product they are making a well-informed choice, which, again, increases the likelihood that they will actually want to buy it.

External business functions
A website’s external business functions relate to how potential clients are drawn to the site, before they have had a chance to see what it contains. This is a particularly important task, as if a client does not enter the website, he/she cannot use it to make a purchase or carry out any other kind of interaction. Websites achieve this goal by optimising their content in such a way that makes it visible to search engines and ensures that whatever the user sees is relevant and attention-grabbing, encouraging them to visit the site.

There are many additional ways to ensure that your company website attracts the interest of potential clients, most of which are linked to the amount of additional information displayed in search engines — maps with your address, illustrations from the website, a list of the site’s sub-sections, etc. The more abundant this information, the more trustworthy the company looks; this is achieved by careful manipulation of the website’s content, so that search engines deem it worthy of such a detailed description.