Bring in More Leads With Your Website
18 Simple Ways to Increase the Effectiveness of Your Site
by Geoff Snow
Findability
If your target market can’t find your website, it is useless. The following tips are the most important for creating an easily findable site.
- Lots of good external links. Google’s robots love sites that are well linked. Ask vendors, distributors, customers and partner businesses to link to your site. Get listed in every directory available. Some ideas: YellowPages.com, LinkedIn, Local.com, Merchant Circle, Yelp. Find local directories for your area, city directories, chambers of commerce. Find out about industry-specific directories and associations. Google your competitors and make sure you have a listing with a link anywhere they appear. There are many that are free or very inexpensive.
- Put your site everywhere. Put your site on all advertising, business cards, letterhead, vehicles, email signatures, and everywhere else you can think of.
- Determine keywords. What words will your target audience most likely to type into Google? If you don’t know, ask some existing customers. Make a list of these words, and use them for the next steps.
- Use keywords in content. These words should appear in the text of your site. Especially the home page. Don’t “stuff” the pages with keywords, but include naturally in your description of who you are and what you do.
- Use keywords in page info. Each page must have its own title and description in the document head. Be as descriptive and accurate as possible, and use your keywords whenever possible. To check this information for any web page: right click on the background of the page and click "view source". Towards the top of the document, you should see <title> and <meta name="description"> with text that fits the above information. If not, it is much harder for Google to send visitors your way.
- Avoid images of text. Google needs actual text to read, not JPGs or GIFs of fancy lettering. Not sure if that text on your page is an image? Try to highlight it with your mouse. If you can’t highlight it, Google can’t see it.
- Good description of images. Make sure all images that you have used on your site have a good
description. To check this, again bring up "view source" as in number 3. The place where each image is listed should have an alt= beside it. Example: image.jpg alt="beautiful picture of my products and services".
Usability
Once visitors have found your site, you need to make it very user friendly. Studies show that you have about seven seconds to make an impression. If they perceive difficulty, they move on to your competitor’s site.
- Make important information easy to find. Business name, phone number, address, store hours and other things your customer is likely to be looking for should be easily accessible.
- Easy navigation. The navigation menu should be visible, obvious, easy to use, and labeled clearly and accurately. Horizontally near the top, or vertically down the left side is where visitors will look. If you have more than a handful of buttons, consider adding another level that opens up when the mouse is hovered.
- Short paragraphs with descriptive headings. Text that is easy to read. No difficult contrasts or busy background images. Internet users like to scan your information.
- People hate scrolling. Don’t make a page so wide that visitors must scroll sideways. Surveys have shown that this is the number one turn off of internet users. Try to keep important information at the top of the page also, to minimize vertical scrolling.
- No splash page. Another user pet peeve. Don’t force visitors to watch a cool animation or video before they get to the information. They want it now.
- Test your site in all major browsers. Don’t assume that your visitors all use the same browser you do. Visit your site (or have someone else do it for you) with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. (These browsers currently account for some 98% of internet users, as of March ’09.)
Effectiveness
Now they can find and use your site. Use your site to convert them into customers!
- State the benefits. Visitors arrive to any website thinking "What’s in it for me?" Tell them. Be quick to list features and benefits you provide. Be slow to talk about yourself.
- Target your market. Don’t aim your content at everyone under the sun. You know your customers. Speak directly to them, and offer them something compelling. Create the look and feel that your target will respond to.
- Testimonials. It’s a great big internet. You’re just another website out of several billion. A good testimonial from a specific customer can really separate you from the crowd.
- Call to action. Tell the visitor what you want them to do next. Go to the product page? Pick up the phone and call? Download a free sample? Be clear and specific.
- Keep it up-to-date. Broken links, outdated text, and incorrect information will kill you with today’s savvy web surfers.