Is your Website Working?Use this check list to ensure it is.
By Jo Patterson, WHK Business Growth Manager
Virtually all businesses have a website these days or intend to in the near future. But sadly many website fail to deliver on their potential.
After an initial flurry of on-line activity (“hey everyone, take a look at our new website!), the reality sets in. Websites require ongoing maintenance and development.
Here’s a quick checklist to help you ensure your website is a valuable investment in the future rather than an unavoidable cost of doing business in the 21st century.
1. What is the objective of your website?
Before you can measure your website’s performance you first must define its purpose:
- to build a database of people who are interested in what you offer?
- to show off what you do and generate enquiries?
- full eCommerce – to facilitate online transactions?
An effective website can reduce costs and save time by handing routine enquiries. It can improve your business by facilitating customer feedback and complaints. It can build your brand and ‘lock in’ your resellers and customers.
It’s important to set up a tracking and measurement system to monitor how your website is performing.
2. Content must be web friendly and relevant to your audience
Does it answer their questions and tell them what they really want to know or just what you think is important?
Web users spend 3-15 seconds deciding to stay or move on. Quick loading pages, clear layout and no jargon will win you friends. Content should be easy to read using short sentences (no more than 20 words), broken into paragraphs (< six sentences long) with subheadings.
We scan, we don’t read online. Unlike the printed word, on-line we read headlines and subheads before we look at graphics and photos.
3. Does your website build your credibility?
The internet has changed the way consumers and businesses search for suppliers; your site may be all they have to form their opinion. A good and credible website can mean the difference between being short listed or being overlooked.
Testimonials, client lists, awards, affiliations, even your company history all build confidence in your business.
By clearly listing contact details and your physical address you prove you’re not an anonymous cyber creation.
4. Clearly explain what you want them to do.
Make it easy for visitors to get in touch with you. Suggest they phone or email you right now with their enquiry, and tell their friends about your site.
Make instructions easy to follow. List steps in chronological order and tell people what to expect.
Add a call to action to every page – ‘phone us now’ and ‘email us today’ for example.
5. What’s your process for dealing with enquiries?
Considering the expense of generating sales leads through advertising, networking, trade shows, etc, it’s surprising how many businesses fail to respond promptly to web enquiries.
An automatic email response acknowledging receipt of the enquiry is very easy to set up. While it’s no substitute for more personal customer service, this ‘stop gap’ can buy you time, while providing your enquirer with a record of their enquiry, your phone number and other salient details you choose to write in the automatic email response.
6. Tell everyone your web address
Your web address should appear on all your stationery, not just your businesses cards. Invoices, packaging and product labels, signage, and especially advertising are all effective tools to encourage people to visit your website.
Building a website and not promoting your web address is like printing thousands of glossy brochures and leaving them boxed up in the corner of your office, gathering dust.
7. Search and you’ll be found?
Search engines are like the ‘operating system’ of the internet. If they don’t know your website exists, they can’t direct web users to you. Search engines look for certain ‘markers’ on your website. If your ‘markers’ are not there the search engine won’t know how to classify your website.
While there are search engine optimisation specialists these days, there are certain things you can do, quite simply, to improve your search engine rankings yourself:
• Every page should have a page title
• Include the name of your industry and product names several times in the content of your website.
• Put keywords near the top of the page, ideally in the first sentence
• A picture is worth a thousands words but not to search engines who ‘read’ but cannot ‘see’. Add captions to all pictures and images.
• The home page is the most important page. Make sure your company name and what you do are on your home page, in text, not just graphics or images.
• Update your website, search engines notice fresh content
Search engine optimisation is an evolving science so it pays to keep abreast of changes. Useful websites: www.netconcepts.com and www.webwidgets.co.nz
8. Learn from your web statistics
The company that hosts your web site or the IT people who monitor your servers create a daily report on your site traffic or can easily do so if asked. A quick look at this information can reveal:
• exactly which sites your visitors were at before they visited yours – a search engine, your industry association (you are listed in their member directory , aren’t you?)
• exactly which search words people used to find your site via search engines. Add these to your web content to improve your rankings further
• exactly which pages on your site are most popular. You’ll want to expend these sections and not the less popular topics.
In summary, websites are not for your organisation. They’re for your customers. Take a look at your website, how it works and what it says. Then consider whether or not people can people find it in cyberspace.
Your website can and should be a wonderful tool to communicate to your existing customers and hottest prospects.
The WHK Business Growth team runs fully funded workshops that look at how to effectively market via the web and email. Register to attend Effective Email Marketing and/or Effective Web Marketing workshops.
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