Creating a Business Website That Actually Works

Julie Starr • November 23, 2022



It’s common knowledge by now that more and more businesses have gone through a
digital transformation . The world as a whole has shifted dramatically to depend more on technology and the business world has seen the potential.

Even small businesses now are likely to have an online presence and have seen the benefits. Here are some ways to help you to create a business website that actually helps your company.

How a Website Can Help

A website can have a huge impact on your company’s growth and profitability. It can allow you to reach customers all over the world. The internet is brilliant at one thing, and that is connecting people. While once, your target audience was limited to people who were local to your physical store or who you could otherwise reach in person, the internet allows you to reach everyone online. 

Some businesses, especially small businesses, have given up on physical stores altogether. Business websites are incredibly versatile, meaning that you can use them to advertise your product, sell your products, and offer advice and additional services. Your website can also act as a portfolio of your past work and allow customers to get to know your team and your company better.

However, certain industries still benefit from having a physical location for people to access. This might be an office or workshop where your employees work or a store that people can walk into to see your products in the flesh. However, your website will always draw more people in, especially if you use it right.

Social Media

As well as a business website, many companies expand their digital presence even further. Social media is essentially an online community where people congregate and share thoughts and opinions. People live separate lives on social media and can spend hours scrolling through to find something that interests them.

If your goal is to reach potential customers, then it makes sense to bring your brand to them. Social media allows you to do this in a setting that’s natural and comfortable for them. A social media account is a great platform to tell people about your business and what it has to offer.

Your social media account should have a personality that suits your brand. Some companies do this incredibly well. Both Wendy’s and Denny’s, fast food restaurants in the US, are well known for their social media accounts and the amount of personality and humor they deliver. Even if they aren’t directly advertising a product, people still see the brand.

This approach doesn’t work for every company. Some brands work better with a more professional social media presence, which means that you would avoid injecting as much personality into your posts. 

However, your social media account should be something that people find engaging and useful. If someone follows your business account, they’re far more likely to use your products or services. You can also use social media to tell people about any promotions or deals, which encourages people to try out your business. You should post regularly to encourage followers, but avoid spamming people with too many posts.

When setting up a social media account, be sure to link it to your business website so that people can visit it to make purchases or learn more about your company. 

Good Website Design

You can’t simply set up any old website and expect it to work. Your website needs to be designed so that people will find it easy to get around. Many people and companies use website design templates or platforms to help them to do this. Website design doesn’t have to be simply the domain of an IT professional anymore.

One great option is to outsource your website design to someone who knows exactly what they’re doing. They can then create a website that suits your needs and your brand, without any hiccups that could frustrate your customers. 

Services like Geelong offer a professional product that you and your customers can appreciate. If you want to create a new website for your Geelong business , then you can be assured that someone will develop exactly what you need. 

You should determine early what kind of website you want or need. If you’re selling a product, then an eCommerce website is a must. An online store like this can display your products and provides payment options for your customers. It should be easy to navigate and the checkout process should be as painless as possible to encourage customers to continue with the sale, rather than abandoning the shopping cart or basket.

However, other businesses might be able to make do with a simpler design. If you offer a service, then your website can instead act as a portfolio to show off your work and a point of contact between you and your customers. 

Sometimes eCommerce features, like payment options, are beneficial, so it’s best to figure out the best plan for your needs and design a website that can grow and develop further. Considerations like this are why web designers are so helpful.

Useful Content

As well as a platform to sell and advertise your products, your website should also include content for your customers and target audience to consume. Almost every business, no matter its niche, includes a blog of some kind, and so should you.

This is for a variety of reasons. First, while a website is convenient, it isn’t very personal. Part of the art of making a sale is getting a customer to like you. A blog allows you time to do this. If it’s well-written and useful, then a customer will appreciate it and be more likely to purchase a product or service from you. A blog can make you seem like more of an authority, which means that the customer can trust you. 

Content is also useful for marketing purposes, specifically SEO. SEO, otherwise known as search engine optimization, is a technique that works along with search engines on the internet to funnel people to your website. 

When most people are looking for a product or service, they use a search engine. They might type “blue wool coat for women” into the search bar and the engine will then find websites that it deems the most suitable for that subject. Typically, this will be a lot of clothing stores that sell coats.

The search engine results page (SERP) prioritizes two kinds of websites. First, most SERPs will display websites that have paid to be put there, making them more visible to customers. Paying Google or other search engines for this option is a fantastic way to get your brand out there. Secondly, the SERP will display relevant websites.

A search engine determines whether or not a website is relevant using content, backlinks, and keywords. The keyword is what the customer has typed in, so “blue wool coat for women”. The search engine will look for that word or phrase. It will also favor websites that are linked to other websites, as those are easier to find and better connected. So, your content provides search engines with more opportunities to find your website and consider it relevant, making it more likely for customers to find you. 

However, this doesn’t mean all your content should be stuffed with keywords. Search engines are intelligent and can spot this strategy. Your customers are also intelligent and will soon notice badly written content designed to appeal to a robot rather than a human. 

The first priority should be well-written, relevant content that people will find helpful. Many business owners choose to use content writers to add to their blogs. Another thing to consider is how often you post content. If you rarely update your blog, then you lose some of the benefits of owning one. Keep it up to date. 

Using Data Correctly

Your website is also a useful tool for generating data, which is a fantastic resource for any business. Customer data allows you to determine how effective your website is, as well as what people prefer. You can see which products sell best and which aren’t doing as well as they should be.

You can also track how people use your website, so you can see if any areas need improvement. For example, if many people don’t move on from the landing page, then it might not be designed in a way that helps people find what they are looking for. Or if they reach the checkout page but don’t complete the purchase, you could have another problem.

If possible, you should ask for the contact information of your customers. This means that you can reach out to them for other promotional deals, making them more likely to return. You can even contact them about abandoned shopping carts, offering a deal if they complete the purchase. 

A live chat option is an even better way to find out what your customers want, as you can ask them directly. Whatever you do, make sure that people don’t get annoyed or feel their privacy is threatened by your attempts to gather data.

By Julie Starr June 20, 2025
In today’s competitive food and beverage (F&B) landscape, traceability is no longer a compliance checkbox—it’s a differentiator. The ability to track every step of a product’s journey, from origin to shelf, is vital for regulatory accuracy and to ensure brand integrity, supply chain agility, and consumer trust. Add smart sensors to the mix: the quiet, tireless observers revolutionizing supply chain intelligence. Traceability Has a Data Problem Despite digitization across many F&B operations, most traceability systems still rely on fragmented or manual data inputs. Batch numbers, barcodes, and handwritten logs often stand between a supplier and clarity when things go wrong. This approach struggles with latency and scale. When contamination or delays occur, root cause analysis is slow, costly, and damaging. Smart sensors shift this paradigm by embedding real-time, contextual intelligence into every stage of the supply chain . Whether monitoring humidity in transit or recording fill-level precision in bottling plants, they remove the guesswork by turning physical conditions into structured, time-stamped data. From Passive Monitoring to Active Optimization Sensors used to be reactive tools, alerting operators to anomalies. But smart sensors now play a proactive role in process control. They measure, and they interpret. For example, temperature sensors embedded in cold chain logistics can dynamically adjust cooling systems or flag threshold breaches before spoilage occurs. These advancements reduce waste and loss at a systemic level. In a production facility, smart sensors integrated with PLCs can enforce recipe compliance, verify clean-in-place processes, and detect micro-stoppages in real-time. This enables operations to pivot faster and isolate inefficiencies before they cascade downstream. Trust is Built on Transparency Consumers are paying more attention to what they eat and drink. They’re looking beyond labels, expecting visibility into how ingredients are sourced, processed, and handled. Smart sensors make this level of transparency achievable —without burdening manufacturers with excessive manual oversight. By capturing metadata throughout production and distribution, these sensors create a digital footprint that’s tamper-resistant and instantly accessible. When this data is integrated with a central platform, brands can respond confidently to audits, recalls, and quality assurance challenges with a level of precision that would be impossible through legacy systems. Intelligence Without Infrastructure Overhaul One common misconception is that adding smart sensors requires a top-down reinvention of supply chain infrastructure. In reality, companies can deploy edge sensors in a modular, scalable way. Many modern solutions offer plug-and-play functionality, allowing for fast integration with existing machinery and MES systems. This is where suppliers like alps-machine.com are reshaping expectations. Rather than pushing proprietary ecosystems, they design sensor-ready equipment with interoperability in mind. This future-proofs investment and keeps businesses nimble in the face of regulatory or market shifts. Designing for Data Longevity Sensors are only as powerful as the context they capture. A smart implementation ensures the data collected can be standardized, stored securely, and accessed meaningfully across departments. This means moving beyond local dashboards toward centralized, queryable datasets that inform everything from supplier contracts to marketing claims. As AI and predictive analytics become more accessible, these data-rich environments will unlock new capabilities—such as predicting demand spikes based on real-time freshness indicators or adjusting production schedules dynamically based on in-transit sensor feedback. Final Thoughts: Smarter Isn’t Optional Traceability isn’t solved by more paperwork—it’s solved by embedded intelligence. Smart sensors don’t just help businesses know what happened; they help prevent the wrong things from happening at all. For companies in the food and beverage sector, adopting smart sensors is less about chasing innovation and more about enabling resilience, speed, and confidence in every decision.
By Julie Starr June 5, 2025
If you're lucky enough to have a garden as part of your business, taking some time to set it up for summer is a great investment of your energy. Not only will it be ready for your customers to spend time in, but you can also incorporate some eco-friendly elements into it. Many people just think about the property and what eco-friendly updates they can make , but there are plenty that you can implement in your garden. This gives you the best of both worlds. You own a sacred and beautiful place for your customers to spend their summer, and at the same time, you can do your part for a better planet. If this is the route you want to take, then you also need to consider how to do this with the different seasons. To help you on your journey, here are some top tips for preparing your garden for summer. Plant trees and flowers Planting trees and flowers in your garden is a must. It will make a beautiful scene of nature for everyone to enjoy. Trees will provide people and animals with shade, as well as provide a habitat for wildlife. More trees are needed in the world because they purify the air that we breathe. Flowers, especially if you plant with pollinators in mind, can be an excellent way to attract bees and butterflies, which contribute largely to the earth. Use natural pest control When preparing your garden for summer, you can do this more sustainably and kindly by using natural pest control. Simply by planting trees and flowers, you are likely to attract lots of different wildlife, some of which may destroy your efforts. While all wildlife should be considered, you may need to take measures. Some better and more eco-friendly ways you can do this, as opposed to spraying toxic chemicals onto your plants and into the air, you can implement companion planting, using protective nets over your crops, choosing resilient plants, using natural repellents, and encouraging natural predators so nature can do its thing. Maintain your garden Maintaining your garden in itself can make it more eco-friendly. Composting your garden waste regularly, and kitchen waste can help you to reduce overall waste and create nutrient-rich soil. This is a great cycle of sustainability. You can also keep on top of things that need cleaning and replacing, so you can recycle the materials for other garden structures and projects, and repurpose things around your garden before they become waste. If you have features in your garden like a swimming pool, then a regular pool maintenance service is going to be vital in keeping your water consumption to a minimum, as when it is cleaned and maintained, it will need to be drained and refilled less as well as using less energy. You could also consider how you can use natural purification methods to reduce chemical usage and support biodiversity right in your backyard. Your garden is just an eco-friendly project waiting to be built. Use these top tips to help you get started.