Some of these website marketing tips may seem obvious, and yet we all run into what should not be done everyday on the internet:
- Too much sound or music can drive people away fast. Think with the type of site you have. If you are a musician, then music can be expected. If the type of business is selling financial advice – don’t have music.
- Hard to find information: If someone has to search through a site to find something that has been advertised, that’s not good. It must be easy to find through menus; or site specific search software; or visible linking. Make everything EASY for your viewer.
- Hard to read pages: there are multiple ways to make a page hard to read unfortunately. Page is too busy; wrong font style; font not big enough; font color on background color a bad match (like red font on dark blue background; images that are too big and load too slow, etc. etc.
- Perhaps the best way to make sure no one enters a site is a flash ‘front page’ that takes forever (in computer time) to load. People will leave sites due to waiting too long and then you never have the opportunity to make a “first impression”.
- How to contact must be obvious. Put a phone number in the header or use a simple website “contact form” on a ‘contact us’ web page that shows in the menu line.
- ALWAYS include a way to get back to the Home Page from every page.
- ALWAYS check the speellingg on a wrebsote.
- ALWAYS test your links. Take out any that do not work.
- ALWAYS have your images on your own server – do not link to a picture from another website.
- ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS use keywords in your website – those that apply to your product or your service. Place them at the top of pages and use them in content.
- Make changes to the web pages, however small, every couple of months. Search engines want to find new content and changes on sites. Update the website. Add a Blog. Keep it fresh.
- Shopping Cart? If you are selling products; consider adding a shopping cart. More and more people are purchasing over the web.
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Many people spend hours on the internet looking for information or suppliers or they want to save time by purchasing on the web.
But, it’s important to understand that the web has its own specific marketing rules and many businesses have not considered the following issues on their websites:
- You must keep your readers interests in mind when you write content or design a site.
- “Content is King” is said over and over and over. Well, it is the most important thing, both to a visitor as well as the search engines. But, too much content on one page is not good. The screen is small. People are busy. Make sure your information is in compact pieces.
- Make your most important information show “above the fold” (bottom of the visible screen). You can link within the site to full content pages with lots of data.
- Search engines will “like” a website because it has a lot of relevant information. Relevance is key to good search engine optimization; but more importantly it is key to your reader!
- The first time someone sees content on a page it should be short and catchy; using the marketing concept of “features and benefits”. Then if they choose to ‘read more’ they can go to the full page of information.
- Bad structure/design of a site, or hard-to-figure-out structure, is like stopping people before they get to start. Navigation should be made very easy with menu drop-downs.
- People don’t like pop-up windows. Period.
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Are you a smaller company running your organization on opinion – or on real statistical data? Do you have a method of capturing statistical data easily?
Do you know how valuable Metrics can be to assist in running your business for such things as:
- Know immediately if sales are dropping off or getting better (and WHY)
- Find areas of the organization that are not producing enough or are not efficient
- Follow the progress of ANY changes made – and the result they have on your business thereafter
- And much, much more!
Capture the data – then find out how to make your business run better each month. This is the EASIEST way to run a business and not make mistakes. Don’t run on opinion – KNOW the answers.
Written by Wren Long
