Improve your websites chance of success

Pretty much every business today has a website – from the local hairdressers through to multi million pound global enterprises. Whilst the amount spent and expected return may be significantly different the way of ensuring success is pretty much the same. Follow these 10 steps and you too could have a more effective website

Remove barriers for users and search engines
Make it as easy as possible for your target audience to use your website, to navigate from section to section and to discover what they are looking for.

Don’t use jargon in menu headings, unless this jargon is used and understood by your audience.

Avoid technical wizardry (flash home pages being the obvious example) that get in the way of the user finding what they are looking for. Flash is not only frustrating for the user it can also mean the search engines struggle to index your pages effectively – meaning you are less likely to be found by anyone searching for your services.

Make it easy for people to contact you
How many websites have you visited where you want to check out if the company is legitimate or even just where they are located – but they haven’t included an address or telephone number. I don’t know about you but this always rings alarm bells for me.

You should have nothing to hide – so include your details.

If you know the common questions people are likely to ask about your services and don’t have the time to deal with their individual calls include a frequently asked questions section – or better still answer the anticipated questions with well written copy.

Get rid of old content
Of course you need to make sure any product or service information is up to date – but you need to go beyond that. There’s nothing worse than visiting a ‘latest news’ section on a website to find the last posting was in April 2005. If you have a news section you need to put systems in place to get it updated regularly – and bear in mind news can be anything from a new product launched, a new member of staff, a significant client win, client events, comment on something in the national news – almost anything really. Just something that demonstrates a little about what your business is about and positions you in a positive light.

Update your site regularly
A news or blog section is a good way to keep a site refreshed. But you should in any event consider a regular update to your website to help with the search engines. One of the many things search engines consider when they are assessing a site’s ‘value’ is when and how frequently it is updated.

Review your landing pages
A quick word about landing pages first of all. These are the pages that visitors enter your site through. They would normally include your home page, but often include specific product pages or articles that are well ranked by the search engines. You can see which pages people land on by looking at your website statistics.

Look at these pages as a potential customer would. Do they get your message across? Do they include a clear call to action? Would you buy?

Research and keep an eye on keywords
Having a website is great, but having a website that doesn’t get any visitors is pretty useless. Visitors will arrive at your website either because they type in your URL (www.secondopinionmarketing.co.uk for example), follow a link from another website or document (as in this link) or because they find you via a search engine search.

It’s important to develop a list of keywords and phrases which you believe people will use when looking for your service or product. There are tools on the web, including Google’s Keyword Research Tool which can help you determine which keywords you should use – in both the copy on your page and the page title tags and meta data.

Keywords will also be trigger words that your target audience will be looking for when they come to your website – so make sure they are in things like the page headlines, bullet points, menu items etc.

Ask a friend to use it – and watch what they do
This idea is so simple, yet few business owners follow it. You know how you would use and navigate your website – but what about others? Ask a friend or business associate to visit your website and give you some honest, constructive feedback about what they think.

It might help to ask them to focus on things like – how easy it was to find certain pieces of information, how they navigated their way around (ie did they use the search function or just follow the menus), did the site answer any questions they had? Did they find the content easy to read? Did it make them want to find out more? And so on. I wouldn’t be too concerned about whether they liked the particular shade of blue you have used (in my view the graphic design shouldn’t need to be commented on) – but if they comment that colours or design are getting in the way of them finding information they need, then I’d get worried.

Add clear calls to action on key pages
First things first, what do you want people to do as a result of visiting your website? Do you want them to subscribe to your newsletter or download particular information? Do you want them to call and place an order? Do you want them to visit your showroom or do you want them to make an enquiry online?

Once you have decided what action you want visitors to take then make sure it’s clear on the site itself, and make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

Have your copy reviewed and rewritten by an expert
Website copy is different to brochure copy. Few people will read a website in any sequential way, so there is the need for a certain amount of repetition.

Research shows that web visitors view pages in a particular way – generally scanning across the top and down the left of the page before settling in the middle – in a classic ‘F’ pattern.

From your own web browsing you’ll also be aware that you often spend only seconds on a page. So headlines and sub-headlines are very important to grab attention – and of course they need the right keywords.

As with all sales copy website copy needs to focus on the reader, not the writer and needs to be packed with benefits, not just features.

Check your web stats regularly
If you are hoping to improve the performance of your website you need to understand your starting position. I’d suggest three basic measures from the outset:

Number of unique visitors per month (and more frequently if that helps)
Number of enquiries, leads and / or sales per month from the website (often this means implementing a system to look at source of enquiry and sales)
Top 5 landing pages per month

If you want to look more deeply you can look at things like keywords used to find your site, bounce rate, number of pages viewed and length of time spent on site – but you need to start somewhere.

Any small business owner that follows the 10 steps above will be instantly ahead of the game compared with most of their competitors. All too many businesses spend months and hundreds, if not thousands of pounds getting a website created but forget how important it is to keep it working for them, 24/7.

Further Reading
Turn your website into a goldmine
Why your website might fail

Article written by Teresa Harris, Second Opinion Marketing. Teresa is an independent marketing consultant working with professional practices, small businesses and public sector bodies to develop effective marketing plans which achieve their business objectives.

As a marketing coach Teresa works with new marketing managers and small business owners to enhance their marketing performance.

Contact Teresa here.

Article first appeared in Practical Marketing E-Bulletin November 2008. Subscribe here for future copies.