How to Make Your Website Design REALLY Work for You

Does your website design currently work for you?  Most companies would say that, at best, their website might be a nice receptionist with a great smile. Is that what you really want? Why isn’t your website your best sales person? This article will set you on the path to making your website be a more active member of your team.

Know your website visitors:

Take the time to analyze all of your potential website visitors. I mention potential because if you are putting together a new website or investing in updating an existing site, this is the time to try something new, or to examine all of the opportunities you may have been missing out on in the past.

Determine what each segment of potential visitors will want to learn/do while on your site.  Don’t assume everyone will want to find the same information. If you only have one product but sometimes sell to CEO’s and at other times sell to IT directors then you have two very different people who are looking for very different information. Every good sales person knows they have to alter their pitch to match the personality of the prospect. Your website should be no different.

Create multiple calls to action/engagement:

Now that Google has created a new playing field for the web, users may enter your website from any page. Therefore, all that time and attention you spend on the home page should also be spent on your subpages. Don’t get me wrong, your home page will likely be the most commonly seen page, and you absolutely need to carefully plan and craft the funnels in which you take each of your visitors through. However, each subpage should have it’s own call to action, allowing you to pull your user through the site to your desired end point instead of allowing them to meander their way through.

Refine your keywords:

Again, I will refer to Google because it is, by far, the most used search engine and with Google, keywords are king.  It’s important that you know your key words for each of your potential website visitors, as well as each of your service offerings or products before you start constructing your site.  You can make adjustments as you go, but you’ll be much more effective if you do your planning and research ahead of time.  This is because it has become very important for your content pages to be focused on individual topics rather than covering a multitude of areas. Both the content on your page, as well as the metadata should be very focused and support one another. This will signal to Google that the page is highly relevant for the desired topic.  There are many more areas to focus on with search engine optimization but that’s for another blog.

Create reasons to engage:

Your website is very much a sales tool for you. It’s there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, waiting for someone to engage with. It’s important to remember, however, that prospects don’t typically make a buying decision the first time they hear about you.  So, if the first time they hear about you is a Google search then how are you going to get them to come back, or to remember you when they are finally ready to make the purchase? Also, you want to make sure that once a prospect becomes a customer, they become aware of the additional services or products you offer. This is where getting creative can really help you. If nothing else, take advantage of the tried and true: newsletters, blogs, videos, podcasts, white papers, and other educational elements. All of these items will also help with your search engine optimization

Make it easy to share:

Allow access for all users to email or post a link to their favorite social media sites from any public page on your website. You are missing out on a huge opportunity if you don’t. Imagine getting a lead from a prospect who was emailed a link to your services page from their best friend or mother. That should be a pretty easy sell. There are now so many ways to easily allow your users to share information that there is no reason not to.

Are you considering a web design or redesign?

The effort poses many questions: What will make my site better and more effective? What do I absolutely need to take into account for my end users? Are there serious SEO issues or new search engine rules that I should watch out for? The following free eBook answers the most crtical questions related to a successful web redesign project:

• Key elements and features “must-haves” for your homepage.
• Critical steps to protect your SEO and content during a site redesign.
• Steps you can take to improve your site right now while the redesign project is underway.

If you’re planning on creating a new website, we have some additional tips for getting started in a previous article. However, if you do the things mentioned in this post, your website should become a more active selling tool for you. Do you have some additional ideas or questions about how to make your website more effective?