Is Your Web Site Ready for 2008?
Tips for Preparing Your Site for the New Year
As 2007 comes to a close, most businesses have spent time planning ahead: new products, new markets, and
acquiring new customers. Those who have not had the time for formal planning have thought about the kind of growth they want to
in 2008. Whether your planning is formal or informal, there is a critical question all businesses expecting growth in 2008
should ask themselves: Is our web site ready?
Web sites have become one of the leading engines behind business development. Your web site is the window into your company through which your audience sees you. It is the way most economic way to acquire new customers, drive sales, build credibility, get out your message, and enhance customer retention and loyalty. Your organization's web site should be an essential part of your plans for 2008.
How Can You Get Your Site Ready for 2008
The top web sites have the following in common:- Have many methods for converting visitors.
- Simple navigation and simple language.
- Unique and interesting content.
- Contain fresh and innovative components.
- Encourage users to bookmark and return.
The most important thing your web site can do for you is convert prospects into sales. But is your web site built to do that? Strong web sites have success funnels, resources, registrations, and conversion tools all over them to make sure they are giving their visitors plenty of opportunities to give their information, purchase a product, request more information, or sign up for a newsletter. Focusing on site conversions means increased sales and maximized return on investment for each marketing and advertising dollar spent. Good site conversion strategies take time and planning to make sure the user gets exactly what they want from search to submit.
Navigation and Language
Understanding what users want from your site, and designing the site to get them where they want to go can be a complex task, and User Experience planning is critical to the success of your web site. You can have the best product or service on the market, but if a customer can't get the information they are looking for when they're looking for it, they will click the back button. Using simple language and short sentences can encourage longer user sessions. Building your site around helping users to navigate and easily understand what you're offering and how they can be an important step towards online success.
Unique Content
Statistics show that users spend about 3 seconds deciding whether they want to stay on a site or move on. Is your content compelling enough to catch a user's attention in just 3 seconds? Building the right content and message, and displaying it in a way that is going to interest your visitors is a very difficult. If your web site content is not regularly updated, periodically overhauled, and constantly measured against the competition you are loosing potential leads to your competition.
Innovative Components
Most organizations think their site has to look just like all the other sites in their industry. They add the tools they see others have, they use content everyone else has, even choose colors and designs of related web sites. There's more to your customer than this! Innovation and creativity across the web are producing powerful sites with high conversion rates. Your site can have the same results if you broaden your thinking to draw inspiration from a wide variety of sources. Video, blogs, Flash, landing pages, dynamic content, targeted messaging, RSS feeds, articles, whitepapers, affiliate tools, cross linking - these are all examples of business building tools. Consider a creative facelift to your site that goes beyond your competitor.
Repeat Visitors
Aside from a converted sale, one of the most important metrics in measuring web site success is the number of repeat visits. Well designed, finely crafted, and simple messaged sites all find ways to keep their visitors coming back. Incentives, resources, news, updates, newsletters all keep the visitor interested and wanting more. What does your web site do to promote repeat visits?
Many Edit-X customers have contacted us already and asked what they can do to improve things and get their sites updated. Most thinking some costly work but you will be amazed how adding a simple form, revising the homepage, changing a few graphics, writing a couple article, optimizing a few pages are all great and simple ways to get started preparing for 2008.
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