7.  You have a great website… now what? Just because you have a website doesn’t mean they will come (sorry for the field of dreams reference).  The question on most people’s minds when visiting a website is “how credible are they”. If you are not credible then your potential customer will bounce. One way to improve this is to offer the customer ways to contact you. Provide a mailing address, telephone number, Skype account name, etc to show your customers that you can be reached.  There is nothing worse than purchasing something from a website then trying to get a hold of the seller when something goes wrong. Make this process painless for customers and detail your return policy and privacy statement clearly on the site.

All of Next Step web design packages include contact pages that show your contact information prominently and a design that showcases your company information on every page. Also included are the privacy and policy pages.  You have to simply customize the information from our basic outline to make it yours.

Spread the word: Reading: Website Secrets Revealed Part 7

6. Would you go to a sporting goods shop looking for groceries? What about the grocery store to find that outfit for your big date? NO! Then why do websites try to sell everything under the sun? That being said, you can sell a lot of products, but the more products the harder it will be to maintain navigation and speed.

This is why we need focus when designing a website. Each product should have its own page devoted to it focusing on its attributes. It is also a good idea to cross promote using things like “others have also purchased…” or “these accessories would increase functionality…” and list the products. Be careful to not bombard potential customers with meaningless ads, but subtly suggest they buy more.

Spread the word: Reading: Website Secrets Revealed Part 6

5. 85-90% of the traffic that comes to your site will be from search engines. Sites like Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, etc will index your site (if you tell them it exists) and allow users to find you. With this in mind, why not make it easier for the search engines to index your site?

Some will say that Keywords are dead, but that is not entirely true. Keyword usage is part of the overall ranking system that makes up you search engine score. The big thing here is using relevant keywords to the page; do not stuff irrelevant keywords into the Meta tags (some search engines are said to dock you points if you stuff). Each page should have its own relevant set of meta tags that are optimized for that set of information.

The most commonly overlooked tag is the title, do not forget that the title tag will be the wording for the link on the search engine. Do not simply use titles like ‘home’, or ‘products’ instead use ‘Next step computers – Take your business the next step, Quality Web Design ~ Affordable Pricing’ or ‘Next Step Computers - Take Your Business the Next Step, website design packages’ . Here I have used our tag line in the title.

Spread the word: Reading: Website Secrets Revealed Part 5

3. Jumping off of #2, a site need simple navigation. Gone are the days of the flashy splash page that forced a user to wait and view a video or ad before your page loads. The more time it takes a user to find the information that they want the higher their bounce rate goes. That said the navigation should be intuitive not just a list of everything that you do on a separate link. Group like products or use expanding menus to allow users to easily find what they are looking for. If a user/customer is anything like me they will bounce in less than 10 seconds if they can’t find what they want easily.

I you would like to see examples of our work and clear navigation go to http://nextstepcomputers.net/portfolio.php.

4. Do you know who you are selling to? The typical response is “EVERYONE!”, this is just flat wrong! If you are looking to sell to everyone you have no focus or target market. Sure you may get some people if you toss out a big enough net, but that too shall pass. In web design you need to know who you are selling to sometimes more than in a brick and mortar store. If you plan on selling to teens/young adults your site can be more colorful and vibrant with lots going on. On the other hand if you are going b2b (Business to Business) your site should be clean and formal with lots of straight edges and compartmentalized. If you get this wrong you turn away your target. You can try for a happy medium, but you will lose in the end.

As a business, Next Step Computers targets b2b relationships that need web design and hosting. Our target audience is 30-50 year-old small business owners that need to “Take the next step” to the internet. We offer packages that compartmentalize the information that we need to get across and use a basic color scheme to cater to the business world. 

Spread the word: Reading: Website Secrets Revealed Part 3 & 4

2. Customers are looking for familiarity. They look for logos, trade symbols, etc when going into a ‘brick and mortar’ shop, why would a website be any different? Keep the look of your site consistent from page to page, making sure that the navigation and information area remain in the same general area. This will assist the customer in focusing where you want them to focus. If you change it up too much a customer might think that they left your site and someone or thing is hijacking them.  Only use alternate colors to accent areas of your site.

Our websites use CSS and html templates that allow pages to be easily added in the future. This also allows for easier updates to the site. If you would like a free consultation on your website please call or send us a message.


Spread the word: Reading: Website Secrets Revealed Part 2

What are the secrets of the super sites? Why do some sites succeed while others fail? As A business owner you should be asking yourself this daily. Over the next few days I will be posting some tips for building (and maintaining) a better web site.

1. If customers can not at least begin to read about your product in under 10 seconds, they will bounce (leave your site). To minimize your load time, keep graphics small. Compress them where possible. Use flashy technology (Javascript, Flash, Streaming Audio/Video, animation) sparingly and only if it is important to your presentation.

Quite a few "web designers" will use a program that will convert an image of the site into smaller images of the whole to make up the site. This means a couple things, slow load time and low search engine recognition. You can tell these sites when you try to copy and paste something and you can't because it is an image.

Our websites use CSS and html with as little javascript and flash as possible to make load times almost instantaneous. If you would like a free consultation on your website please give us a call or send us a message.
Spread the word: Reading: Website Secrets Revealed Part 1

Just updated my BNI member profile and learned about some great social networking sites. Here are the links to all the ones that I am a member of:

LinkedIn

Facebook

Twitter

Plaxo

Ecademy

Ning

Blogger

Xing

I knew about several of them, but others like ecademy seem really busy... I don't care for busy sites. I am preping for a presentation Tuesday Morning at 7:00am at the Hof Brau Restaurant for BNI.

Spread the word: Reading: Working Hard