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Learn
The Secrets To Build A
Website That Works!
Often people say
to me, "My business website isn't working. I'm not getting anything out of it."
But before you can get "something" out of your business website, such as leads
and sales, you have to put in the work to build a website that will attract the
visitors you want and encourage them to do what you want. Look at your business
website (or your plans for one) and ask yourself these eight questions to
ensure that you're building a website that works.
1) Does your
business website have a professional appearance? Cookie-cutter site
templates and/or home-made websites stand out like sore thumbs, and do nothing
to encourage anyone to do business with you. Unless you are an
experienced website designer, you should hire one to design a business web site
for your company.
2) Does your
business website provide "real" content? The "endless sales pitch" approach is
vastly overdone and an instant turn-off for visitors. People come to your
business website to see information about your business, and your products
and/or services. They are already interested. So provide more relevant,
additional content for them. For instance, if you offer bookkeeping services,
additional information on keeping records or tax tips are great value-added
content. If you sell tiles, provide not only detailed information on your
product lines, but how-to information on installation.
3) Does your
business website make it easy for people to do business with you? Somewhere on
your business website, you need to have a page that has your contact
information, including your mailing address. It's not good enough to just have
an e-mail address, especially one that starts "webmaster@". Carrying contact
information on every page is even better.
4) If you have an
e-commerce site, do you provide adequate online payment options for your
customers? If you want people to buy your product, you have to make it easy for
them. Invest in a good shopping cart, and make sure that you offer payment
options such as credit cards and other online payment options. People don't
want to have to bother to print off and mail in a form and a check.
5) If you're
selling a product or service online, does your business website address your
visitor's security concerns? Customers are concerned about transmitting
personal information, such as credit card numbers, over the Web. You need to
not only have the appropriate technology (such as SSL) in place, but let your
potential customers know about it, by putting your Secure Site certificates in
prominent locations, and having a page that addresses your visitor's concerns,
such as a FAQ. Now your site showcases your business, and the products or
services you offer in a way that makes doing business with your company
attractive. What's next? Signage; showing the prospective customer the path to
your business website's door.
How
do you show prospective customers the path to your business website's online
door? Primarily through good search engine placement, which means spending time
on search engine optimization and search engine submission. Look at your
business website and ask yourself:
6) Have you built
search engine optimization into your business website's pages? You need to give
every page of your website the best chance of ranking well in the search
engines. Search engine optimization means that every page of your site has
title tags and meta tags that are appropriate in terms of the keywords you have
chosen for that page - and that you've used each page's keywords or phrases the
"right" number of times throughout each page.
7)
Have you put any effort into search engine placement? The Web is full of
spiders that constantly search for new and updated pages for the search
engines.
However, as there
are millions of pages online, just putting up your business website and waiting
for the spiders to find it is not wise. While I'm sure you've seen those ads
that offer search engine submission to "hundreds" of search engines, this kind
of automatic search engine submission is not effective. What works is taking
the time (or paying someone else to take the time) to manually submit your
website pages to a selection of the top search engines and directories. Some
businesses also find that pay-for-search-engine-placement search advertising is
an effective way to attract the customers they want.
8) Does your
business website have adequate web hosting? While there are still a few free
web hosts out there, many visitors will turn up their nose at your site when
they see that your business is using one. The assumption is that a quality
business will have quality website hosting. Using a free or "inexpensive" web
hosting service can also cause you problems because of excessive downtime -
periods of time when no one can access your business website at all. The
purpose of a business website is to provide your potential clients or customers
who use the Internet online access to your business, and make doing business
with you, rather than someone else, an attractive proposition. If you can
answer "yes" to the eight questions in this article, you have a business
website that will be well on its way to bringing in those leads and sales
you've been looking for.
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