10 ways to improve your website

This is written for everyone with a website that fails to generate enquiries or new clients. The tips and ideas are particularly relevant to businesses that sell services, information or knowledge – like accountants, solicitors, financial advisers, business coaches and other professionals – but there are ideas in here too for your business if you sell products. Service and knowledge based businesses often fall into the trap of developing brochure type websites which provide little value to the visitor and hence generate no return for the business. Follow these 10 simple steps and you can change all that.

Make it interesting
No rocket science in this one – but how many websites have you visited that are so dull you don’t get beyond the first sentence. Visitors don’t need to know (not on your home page at least) that you were established in 1954 by two brothers, nor probably that you are located in Warwick town centre. They need confirmation that they are in the right place and something to keep them there.

Give something for free
The online world has created an expectation amongst people that they can get a certain amount of information or even product for nothing. Think carefully about whether you can include a free download, article, e-book or even a free product. This will start to cement a relationship with the visitor and make them far less likely to navigate away from your site.

Get visitor details
All the research shows that a first time visitor to a website is very unlikely to buy or even to enquire. So you need to find ways to encourage them to return – the first two tips here will help – but if you can gather their contact details and maintain a dialogue with them you can encourage them to return again in the future.

Shorten your sentences
And your paragraphs for that matter. Online we all want information quickly – especially when we first arrive at a website. There’s no time for waffle, exaggeration or any form of unnecessary stuffing. People want information and they want it quickly. Keep sentences to a single point and paragraphs to a single message.

Look at your page layout
People are less likely to read a whole passage online than they are off line. Instead they will scan around for key words and phrases so if they are looking for payroll services or a divorce solicitor they expect to see these words. Make sure these are in your headlines and subheads as well as in your body copy.

There have been a number of studies done which look at how people’s eyes scan web pages. Our eyes apparently tend to scan in a classic F pattern - across the top of the page, down the left hand side and perhaps across the centre of the page too. Anything outside of these areas is likely to be missed by the majority of page visitors.

Call for action
Ask yourself whether each page of your website makes it clear what you want the visitor to do. It doesn’t matter whether that is picking up the phone to call you, sending you an email, downloading an article or visiting another page. If you look at the vast majority of small business websites there is simply no call to action. Make your site different by having a clear call to action on every single page.

Don’t create barriers
By this I mean technological barriers – don’t use Flash home pages for goodness sake – not only will Google have difficulty finding your website but your visitors will be put off too – especially those still using dial up connections or people who don’t have flash software loaded on their computer.

Write for spiders as well as people
Here I am referring to the all important search engine spiders - which in simple terms are software robots that crawl through web pages reading text and following links to gather information about what is contained on a particular website. Google uses the results of these visits when someone types in a search phrase.   You would expect your website to appear if someone typed in the name of your business but that is only really of any use for people that already know you. Try it – and if your website isn’t returned in the first page of results you need to look carefully at the way your website has been put together.

What about people looking for the kind of services you offer? They will type in a word or phrase – eg outsourced payroll, web development company or divorce solicitor. If your website is not ‘keyword rich’ for the terms you believe potential clients will be looking for you will not be found. [This is a very simplistic explanation of what needs to be done to a website to give it a better chance of being found by search engines – I’m happy to spend 10 minutes on the telephone explaining some of the other things to look at – but this work is crucial if you are serious about getting more out of your website].

Ask for feedback
Get someone who’s not familiar with your site – a new member of staff, a family member or a willing customer to use the site and give you their honest feedback. You might even give them two or three things to look for on your site and ask them how easy it was for them to find the information they were looking for, whether they would have felt convinced enough to buy from you and so on.

Respond to enquiries
Really obvious perhaps – but how many times have you sent an enquiry via a website and not received a reply? If you do reply and reply quickly you’ll be better than the vast majority of other companies out there.

Setting expectations about how and when enquiries will be answered is also essential. If you are only available 9am - 5pm, Monday to Friday say so. If you are able to accept out of hours calls make this really clear because this could be how you win out over other businesses.

I’ve confined these tips to the content and structure of your site. I am assuming that your site looks professional and has been designed to match your corporate identity and includes your company logo. If not then clearly you have more work to do. But if it has been professionally designed – provided the design hasn’t overridden function – following these 10 simple steps will improve your website.

Article written by Teresa Harris of Second Opinion Marketing. Teresa is an independent marketing consultant working with professionals and professional service businesses that want more from the marketing.

Contact: Teresa on 01789 740396 or tah@secondopinionmarketing.co.uk

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