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  Even though your site is old and out of date, trying to load up your website on a Smartphone is an impossibility with all of the flash navigation you have on it.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.

Is Your Website Ready for Anything?

What would you consider the most basic defining character of a website? I would say that it is to share information.  The quality of the information, and the ease at getting this information from the website determines how good the website is.  Because the ease of getting to the information is what determines the usability of the website, if the user can’t get to it, your site just doesn’t perform.

You thought I was going to go technical there, didn’t you?

In order to determine if your site is ready for today’s world, we need to look at it in three different ways.  The first is the most obvious: on a desktop or laptop computer.  Chances are, you’re reading this blog on one of these devices.  If you go from this blog to your website, you will see what we like to call the “traditional” website.

Now, before we go any further, you need to remember why your potential customer visits your website.  If they can’t get to the primary purpose quickly, with one or two clicks, your website needs some major work... So,  stop what you’re doing and fill out the “Feedback” page located on the side of the browser window.  Your traditional website needs to be usable, and needs to provide the answers to any questions your customer may need before doing business with you. Once again, we can help with this, if your site is not up to par. Chances are, if you haven’t updated your website in the past two years, you probably have a problem.

The second place we need to look at your website is on a Smartphone.  Load up your website on your phone, and see how long it takes.  Before you start playing around with zoom features, can you read it?  Can you find the link to answer your questions, without squinting or zooming?  Basically, is your mobile website built?

A mobile website is not simply your traditional website, but smaller.  It should be  completely different website.  It should have nice, big buttons, that are easy to read.  It should have menus that are obvious.  You shouldn’t have to start by figuring out which way to best zoom your screen.  Your content should be different, legible, and instantly available to the user.  You don’t need to be able to answer every possible question your customer needs before doing business with you; but rather any question your customer needs to do business with you RIGHT NOW.  Setting appointments, buying services, hours of operation, etc.

Go to Amazon.com on your phone, and you can buy things.  You can search the entire store.  Does it look anything like Amazon’s traditional website? Yes, it does.  It carries the same brand messaging, and it has a similar feel, but it is obviously not the same exact page you see on your computer screen.

That’s two places, and I said, we needed to check three.  The third is your URL.  If I like your site, or your services, can I tell a friend your site?  Can it be passed along easily?  When you want to tell someone your website, do you need to say, “Here, let me spell it for you?”  You need to stay away from certain words, like 2 and to and two.  I’ll be too confused after trying to remember which type of TWO that I’m not going to go 2 ur site. (be careful of strange abbreviations, too!)

If you’re in good shape for all three places, Good job!  If you aren’t, stay tuned for suggestions on how to turn it around without starting from scratch.

What drives people to your website?

What was the last small to medium sized business website that you visited online recently?

Why did you visit it?

Often times, when small to mid-sized businesses begin the design of their websites, these two questions don’t come up. The businesses worry about the questions of, “How are we going to present our content? What are the colors going to be? How can we best highlight how up to date we are? Do we want a graphics and video heavy site, or go with something more basic?”  The questions are geared towards WHAT the website will be, instead of WHY.

Why have you visited a small business website? Was it to contact the business? Shop? Look for support on some issue you had after making a purchase or obtaining a service? Was it something as basic as “Where are they located?” or “What time are they open?”

Design elements are extremely important, and using your website as a platform that explains both your projected brand image and is visually pleasing is obviously such an important part of website design that sometimes the usage is negatively affected. Here are some solutions to making sure your website is functionally up to par.

1. Look at the emails you have received.
1. How many of these are asking questions that the customer should have been able to answer easily from reading your website?
2. Are there usage questions of your product that you could create additional pages/videos for? Perhaps a “How to” section?
2. Count the number of clicks to get to your main reason for having a website.
1. Do you sell online? How complicated is this process for the customer? Is there a one-click method for returning customers?
2. Do you take some form of application? How many clicks is it to reach said application? Is the application worth doing online, or would the customer find it too complex?
3. Simple usability.
1. How many different pages is your “About Us” spread over? (About us, What We Do, Our Story, From the Desk of, etc.)
2. Does your customer have to search for contact information? Business hours? Store location?
3. How’s your beautiful site look on a smartphone? Is it still usable?
4. How many levels down does your website go? Can you get back to your main menu with a couple of quick clicks of the “Back” button?
5. There are questions that your cashier/ service technician may hear all the time, that could be answered on your site. Be proactive.

Aesthetics count. No one goes to your business web page simply to see how pretty a website you have built. Make sure it delivers on content, and on functionality.