Posts Tagged ‘Modernizing Websites’
Extreme Makeover: The Website Edition
Friday, February 22nd, 2008
With the Internet now taking over from traditional buying methods as the number one choice when it comes to your customers, having an effective website is key to your business’s success. Yet, surprisingly, research by Microsoft Small Business Center shows that more than half of company websites are out of date.
This is usually down to a variety of reasons - lack of fresh content, using old technology, out-of-date information and more. There’s nothing worse than having old information on a site that looks like it was designed in 1998. If you want to know if your website is out of date, take a look at your competitors’ websites and see how they compare to yours. If your site looks slow and cumbersome compared to the competition, you can be sure any potential customers are thinking the same. So how do you improve it?
Reduce the Pages
Contrary to popular belief, a website doesn’t have to be super intensive. The most effective sites only have around 10-12 key pages, with the rest as add-ons. Therefore, keep only the most important pages active - About Us, Services, Contact, etc - and condense any older news into easily downloadable PDF files in an archives section.
Revise the Look
You know how you keep your place of business looking as inviting as possible for visitors? Perhaps a fresh lick of paint each year, or new furniture or fixtures? Do the same for your website - overhaul any drab site design with a fresh design. Include Flash if you want to have interactive content , or simply change the template to a more modern design. There are a host of web design companies that can do this for you, if you’re unsure yourself, but make sure that you do something to make your website visually appealing.
Offer Visitors Control
It’s a well-known fact that your website only has 8 seconds in which to grab someone’s attention. With your new site design, this will be easier for you to achieve - however, once you have your potential customer, you need to make your site as simple as going into a brick and mortar store and buying something. So make sure your website is e-commerce friendly. Offer shopping carts and buying guides; make the buying and checking out process as simple as it can be; and offer a variety of payment options .
Marketing Tool
One of the most effective ways to keep your site up-to-date is to involve your customers with the process. Offer them an option to subscribe to a newsletter. Have a follow-up email thanking them for their business and asking how the buying process was, and how it can be improved. You can them use this information to streamline your site even more.
Use a Content Management System (CMS )
Early websites relied purely on HTML for their design and content. Now, however, there are numerous CMS systems that allow you to easily manage your website’s content. You can upload new files; update your sales page, and much more. Some of the best include Joomla or WordPress - have a look to see what’s easier for you.
There are other ways to modernize your website, but these are some of the most basic yet effective. Keeping your site fresh will also help you increase your search engine ranking, so make sure you update it regularly, and check on your competitors to help you stay ahead.
Tags: content management system, danny brown, E-Commerce and E-Business, Marketing, Modernizing Websites, Web Design
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Taking Proper Maintenance and Care of Your Website
Monday, January 21st, 2008
No matter how successful your small business may be, there are always ways to make it even more successful. One of the most effective ways to do this is by having an up-to-date and well maintained website. With Google and other search engines preferring new content over SEO-heavy text and old information, making sure you look after your website can mean the difference between a relatively successful business and a very successful business. Think of your website like a garden - with proper maintenance and care, it can grow into something beautiful and, most importantly, fruitful.
Seeding Your Garden with Content
Everybody’s heard the phrase “content is king”, and nowhere is this truer than online. Without content, after all, why would anyone visit your website in the first place? Therefore, make sure you constantly update your website with new and fresh content.
This could be anything from latest company news to special offers - anything that you have a reason to put up on your website, make sure you do actually put it up. Depending on your needs and current situation, you can either do this yourself, or outsource your online presence to a third-party specialist company. Although this can cost more, it can be worth if for a more professional looking website.
Testing Your Soil
Analytic software will help you analyze your website and ensure that it’s running to its maximum potential. For example, it can advise you on what are the best keywords to use to get onto Google’s top pages; it can also advise you if there are any broken links, as well as generally help you to keep your site running to its best. IBP and Arelis are particularly useful pieces of software that can help in this area and provide the results you need.
Getting Rid of the Weeds
The biggest turn-off for many Internet users is a badly designed site. If it’s Flash heavy with lots of graphics cluttering the page, or your link navigation is confusing, you can be sure you’ve just lost a potential customer. Besides, remember that Google prefers content to images? Therefore, there’s no need to make your site one of the flashiest on the Internet just for the sake of it.
Instead, provide a clear layout with simplistic links, and an overview of your company on the front landing page if you like. If visitors can find what they’re looking for quickly, they’re more likely to stay and buy, so keep it simple.
Pruning and Watering
There’s nothing worse than visiting a website and finding it out of date. Imagine if you visited CNN’s website and found the news there from last month - it wouldn’t instill confidence in you that they could be trusted with what you need, and the same goes for your website. Make sure that all your latest offers and product range is highlighted, and when important details change, update them immediately.
These are just some of the basics that you should do to maintain your website. However, they’re also some of the most important, and the ones that will leave a lasting impression on your visitors, so make sure you have them taken care of before they cost you potential sales.
Tags: creating a website, danny brown, E-Commerce and E-Business, Modernizing Websites, tips advice, website maintenance
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