Right the Ship — 5 Ways to Optimize Your Website

I’ve had a num­ber of con­ver­sa­tions recently with busi­ness own­ers who are inti­mately aware of the impor­tance of hav­ing a web pres­ence. Hav­ing them explain to me these ben­e­fits (i.e. method of attract­ing new cus­tomers, edu­cate exist­ing cus­tomers about their busi­ness, increase cus­tomer con­fi­dence, cost effec­tive means of pro­mot­ing their books and ser­vices, estab­lish cred­i­bil­ity and trust, sep­a­rate them­selves from the com­pe­ti­tion, etc.) has been impres­sive. Of course this makes sense when you real­ize that in North Amer­ica alone nearly 250 mil­lion peo­ple use the inter­net, this rep­re­sents a tremen­dous pool of poten­tial cus­tomers. But what hap­pens when you fac­tor in a slow eco­nomic envi­ron­ment? Most of the time, these under­stood truths are tossed over­board in a mis­guided effort to store up resources until things pick up. So what is the out­look for today’s inter­net cli­mate? “… the Inter­net should be bet­ter poised to with­stand the storm given its abil­ity to com­bine performance-​​based adver­tis­ing along with broad-​​based brand­ing.” stated David Sil­ver­man, part­ner at Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers LLP. Trans­lated — the answer to increas­ing your busi­ness in a slow econ­omy is not elim­i­nat­ing your mar­ket­ing efforts but, rather, max­i­miz­ing them. Focus­ing on the fol­low­ing 5 ele­ments of your web­site will help you weather this eco­nomic storm. It may even lay the foun­da­tion for grow­ing in these trou­bled times.

Web­site navigation

When a site’s nav­i­ga­tion is intel­li­gent, focused and intu­itive, vis­i­tors have to think less and are able to imme­di­ately find what they are look­ing for with min­i­mal guess­work. There should be a log­i­cal flow of top­ics, subtopics and sub­ject mat­ter within the site. This is vital to con­vert­ing vis­i­tors of your site into customers.

Web­site Design

How the site is devel­oped, its color scheme, archi­tec­ture and under­ly­ing cod­ing struc­ture, plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in con­nect­ing with your audi­ence. Be sure the over­all design is clean and pro­fes­sional. Col­ors and fonts should be easy on the eyes and should enhance rather than dis­tract from the vis­i­tors expe­ri­ence. Appro­pri­ate use of white space will also help focus the user’s attention.

Con­tent

Con­tent greatly deter­mines how vis­i­tors will inter­act with your site. Always write for your audi­ence. Well writ­ten and user focused con­tent allows your vis­i­tors to find out more about your prod­ucts and ser­vices, as well as deter­mine how your com­pany will be able to meet their needs.

Home Page

Your home page is essen­tially your store front. The home page should clearly direct vis­i­tors to the infor­ma­tion they are seek­ing. You only have 3 – 5 sec­onds to make a pos­i­tive impres­sion and turn that vis­i­tor into a cus­tomer. This is where you dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­self. Ref­er­ences, awards, affil­i­a­tions, an updated cal­en­dar of events, etc. all help to accom­plish this.

Vis­i­tor Trust

Your abil­ity to con­vince vis­i­tors that you have a trust­wor­thy, cred­i­ble busi­ness is crit­i­cal. High­light the expe­ri­ence and exper­tise of your orga­ni­za­tion. Be sure that the infor­ma­tion pro­vided is accu­rate, orga­nized and updated fre­quently. Make sure it is easy for cus­tomers to con­tact you and allow for feed­back. This will go a long way as you begin to build a rela­tion­ship with your visitors.