Have You Taken An Objective Look At Your Website Lately?

PR Log (Press Release) – Aug 27, 2009 – Just think, if your website could attract an additional 5% of visitors and was then able to convert 1% or more of those visitors into sales or new prospects, how would that affect your business?

Your website is your shop window, open 24 hours a day. If you owned a store you would lay out your products and promotions to attract customers and maximise sales. Your website has to do the same by making sure customers find something of value and then continue to move around your site.

Design and content
A good design is important, as first impressions will determine whether visitors stay and look around or move on. Make sure your current branding works well on the web page; if it is not powerful enough, now might be a good time for a facelift.

Research tells us that users scan the top and left hand side of the page first so it is logical to place the menu in one or both of these areas. The menu descriptions should be clear and descriptive to guide the user around the site and should be in text capable of being found by the search engine robots when they crawl the site to help improve your page position on the major search engines.

Another important fact often overlooked when websites are being developed is the copy writing. All of your written copy should not only be easy to read and informative for the user but should also include the keywords that relate to your business that are being actively searched by your potential customers.

There are online tools available to help you research the words and phrases that are relevant to your business. The tools can be used to identify which of your keywords are searched most often. You can then sprinkle these throughout the copy on your web pages.

Call to action
Many websites do well at attracting potential customers to their site but then fail to capture any information from visitors before they move on. Web users may view a number of websites when they are researching products and services and if they click off without leaving their details, they may never return. If you can capture their email address at this point, providing you get their permission, you can continue to send information about your products and services to make sure they remember you when they are ready to buy from you or require your services.

Other elements you may want to make prominent on your home page include product promotions to encourage sales, case studies, referrals and an area with a portfolio of your work, if relevant. This will provide the assurance and credibility your customers will be looking for.

Always include ‘terms and conditions’, ‘privacy policy’, ‘delivery guide’, if applicable and a ‘site map’, which should be correctly formatted to help search engines find their way around your site.

Competitions and free reports
These are ideal ways to encourage any new visitors to your site to register their details so that you can add them to your database. Make sure you comply with all of the legal requirements of running these promotions and write a comprehensive list of terms and conditions.

Email marketing
When all of your contacts are in the database, there are a variety of ways to set up an emailing system. You can do it yourself using your own system for small and infrequent mailings. For larger, more frequent mailings and where you may want to send a sequence of emails automatically you will need a more sophisticated system.

Getting the balance between sending too often and not often enough is difficult – the important thing is to keep them relevant and interesting to your target audience.

Content Management Systems
A lot of websites were originally set up so that any changes had to be made by the agency, however if you have information that needs updating regularly, then a Content Management System that allows you to upload your own content is a better option these days. Most agencies can provide this but the quality and functionality of the CMS can vary so you should always make sure you ask for a test run from the agency to ensure your staff can use it easily without needing to learn any programming skills.

This article was written by Mark Langston of Crystal Thought. They can be contacted on 01584 890 725, emailed on info@crystalthought.co.uk or visit their website at www.crystalthought.co.uk