Website effectiveness – five top tips

We believe your website should provide you with new customer opportunities, as well as engage (up-sell and cross-sell) your current customers and provide them with clear concise information on the products and services your company provides.

An effective website has many components, here’s my top five effectiveness tips:-

1. What is your website about?

Consider the home page of your website as your shop window – open 24/7, 365 days a year – it needs to clearly set out who your company is and what you do. You have only a few seconds to keep a visitor to your website on your page so if  the visitor is not convinced within seconds that your site is worth reading, they will move on (you’ve done that too, right?).

So, clearly tell your website visitors which problem your product or service solves and why your solution is better than other solutions. This piece of information should be presented as prominently as possible.

2. Does your website look professional?

I guess we are a little biased here, but think about it...  You are looking online for a product or service and find two suppliers which fit the bill. One has a professionally designed website and is presented in a business-like manner, and the other looks home-made – which would you choose to do business with?

3. Does your website look trustworthy?

Tell your visitors who you are and don't hide your address or contact details, in fact if you are a limited company it is a legal requirement to show these anyway.

Share with visitors to your website your trade memberships, customer testimonials, awards and quality policies.  Include photos of the business owner and/or your team. People buy people, it’s as true online as it is in the offline world.  Transparency creates trust and these factors validate your business  online.

4.  Communicate effectively with your website visitors

Provide information on your products and services in a language that is easy to understand and will resonate with your target market. Avoid clichés, technical terminology (unless it is a technical business that is sold to customers with a high level of technical understanding.), industry buzz words and over-descriptive information.

Ask yourself, what level of education would I need to have to understand my web pages? If you’re not sure, ask friends and family for feedback. Alternatively employ a web copywriter who will be able to help you not only reach your target market, but also satisfy the search engines.

5.  Tell the search engines what they need to know...

For Cariad Marketing customers – we help you with this as part of our web build and SEO packages. If you are doing this yourself, this can be a challenge, particularly if you do not have administrative access for your website or good technical knowledge.

In short, your keywords need to be strategically placed within the structure of your web pages to ensure that the search engines are able to match the correct search terms with your website.

The title and the major tag line on each page of your website should contain the main selling message (of that particular page) and one or two good keywords.

When a searcher sees your website in the Google search results, the title will show the searcher that the he has found a good match. The content on your web page should confirm and clarify this with more detail.

Get this right – and you will not only attract quality traffic to your website, you will increase your conversion rates and get more new customers.

Find out more about Cariad Marketing’s web design and SEO services....