Thursday, August 11, 2011
Making your website more efficient
After taking a good, long, honest look at your business’s online identity, you have come to the realization that it is lacking. Maybe the look and feel is reminiscent of an Atari game. The only emails you receive from your website are from Nigerian Princes or offers to rebuild your website. Even though your site is old and out of date, trying to load up your website on a Smartphone is an impossibility with all of the flash navigation you have on it. Not to mention, the name of your site is www.2beornottoB.net, for all of your Shakespearean needs. How do we fix this without completely starting from scratch?
First, we’ll conquer the domain name issue. Your domain name is a main part of your branding. If you cannot line up your business name with your web name completely, you’d better have something close. Buying multiple domains, and pointing them all at the same site, is one way to help organize this. Just for fun, type in www.coke.com. Notice, it brings you to www.coca-cola.com. Try www.cocacola.com. Same thing, right? If your name could be confusing, or if there’s a chance that someone will type it in wrong, go out and buy yourself some extra domain names, and point them all at your site. Do your best to make sure that you have all of the possible names customer’s may accidentally put when looking for your name.
Next, if your website design hasn’t changed in the last couple of years, you probably need an overhaul. For one thing, any pictures you have of people may seem dated, due to their outfits. Even something as simple as blue jeans and a T-shirt can appear dated. Colors have come and gone out of style. Even your font choice may cry out “New, Inexperienced Company Here”. Keep your site current, with new graphics and style cues. Hint: there’s more than 16 colors allowed on computers now.
If you’re trying to get email from your website, have a form, not just your email address posted there for the world to copy. A form will help to limit some of the junk mail. Understand, there are still desperate people that will go and fill out your form, trying to sell you things, but at least they have to do it on your website. They can’t simply copy your email address into their mass email program and pepper you over and over again. It also makes things easier for your customer. For example, if a customer uses a web-based email system, like Yahoo, they have to copy your email address and LEAVE YOUR SITE to contact you. Do you really want them going off, onto a different site to contact you? Or do you think that they could be distracted when they leave your site, and go to their email? Who knows, maybe that Nigerian Prince has contacted them, too...
In case you didn’t know, people don’t want to read about your business. How many “About us” categories does one business need?(about us, our history, our goals, what we do, how we do it, when we do what we do, our beliefs, meet our staff, meet our staff’s family, meet our pets, our pet’s history and goals, etc.....) The primary subject of your website is your customer. Your website needs descriptions of your products, FAQ’s on how to use them best, contacts for sales or customer service, and a limited amount of social proof. Your website is a sales tool, to either directly sell your product or service right online, or to increase off-line sales. Make sure the point of your website is one click away at most. If you are selling goods, make the sales process easy. Don’t force the customer to fill out 20 different forms before they buy, or they won’t bother.
Remember, it’s about ease for the consumer, not for you.
We’ll tackle mobile websites tomorrow.
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As a rule of thumb, changing the layout of a website on a regular basis, perhaps yearly, can be a great way to keep things fresh and interesting. However, at the same time one needs to be sure that the "clockwork" of the website is ticking efficiently. Before changing the face of the site, it is essential to see if there might be any errors in the design, or if there's any room for improvement.
ReplyDeleteA business website can be technical or casual depending on the brand it represents. Some businesses need more detailed information on their site. This is for those service-oriented companies like construction, banking, and medical services, to name a few. On the other hand, restaurants and fashion lines might need a more visual website.
ReplyDeleteYep, adding major changes to your site is a surefire way to make your visitors stick around. This means that you're making an effort to keep them coming to your site, and this helps a lot in building traffic to your site.
ReplyDeleteDomain names should be short and simple but highly remarkable. What’s the use of having a terrific website when no one can ever remember to tell their friends about it because they can't recall the domain name? Also, it must be unique so that it won’t be confused with another website of the same name.
ReplyDelete@ Sage, you are right! If you want your website to become more efficient, you should determine the things that need to be improved on to satisfy your customers even more, and make them visit your site more often. One thing that people don’t like when visiting a website is the long loading (and sometimes, reloading) times. This annoys and gives them a reason (and the very worst at that) to leave your site. Make sure that you have great web hosting and enough server bandwidth so that you’re sure that your site is performing the way it should be.
ReplyDelete“Make sure the point of your website is one click away at most.” Getting your message across your target market is, and should be, your number one priority. In addition, it should not just be easily noticed, but well-thought out and easy to absorb, as well. Also, make sure that the web design complements the main point of the website (i.e toys, books or cars) and should not be a nuisance when browsing the site.
ReplyDeleteTony Walton