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Top Ten Small Business Web Site Marketing Tips #1 Content All the search engines scan a sites content now - almost ignoring things like meta tags. The more content you have on your site the more the search engines can scan - but there is more to it then that: people like content too. #2 Freshness Having lots of content is great - but if it is all three years old it's not going to look like your site is much of a priority. The search engines actually track this. They monitor how frequently your site changes as they visit it for indexing. The more often it changes the better your rank in the freshness category. #3 No Tricks Many design firms promise success through the use of tricks, backdoors, and special tactics designed to sneak a web site into a top position rapidly. Something, of course, that the search engines are constantly battling to defeat. Why play the game? as the search engines find the cheaters they will plug the holes and a rank (that usually costs a pretty penny to achieve) will immediately be lost. #4 Links There has been a lot of talk about link exchanges - people linking to others merely to gain a higher rank if you are going to link to someone or ask them to link to you - ask yourself: is it relevant? Any old link is not going to help you much - search engines will look at who is linking to you - they are also starting to pay very close attention to how many links you have off your web site on a page. #5 Structure Both the search engines and your web visitors prefer a web site that is well structured. The search engines due to their very nature must break down all web sites into elements based on the structure of the pages. People, so frequently rushing to find the specific information they are looking for, rarely read through web pages but rather scan headings and bullied lists to find the detailed sections of interest. In both cases a well structured site will be far better received then one that is a mish-mosh of information haphazardly thrown together. #6 Accessibility The Web Accessibility Initiative provides a list of guidelines for how to create web sites that are accessible to as many people as possible. Think about your web site - can someone with a visual disability (perhaps even something as simple as colour-blindness) still get information about your product or service? If not, how do you feel knowing that you have just excluded a vast segment of the population from accessing your web site? There are many simple ways that you can ensure your web site is accessible to people with special needs. #7 Quality Code Many small business owners don't have too much control over the code used to create their web site - but it is still important to know how important it may be. Standard compliant code that has been checked for errors is easier for the search engines to assimilate. It is more widely visible across varied platforms (computer types) and in different browsers. Ensure your web designer is writing standard compliant code. #8 URLs Professional web designers should already know this - but if you are using a content management system to build your web site, or portions of it, it is important to understand the significance of the URL used to access pages on your web site. Search engines look at the address of every page on your web site and try to extract key-words from the content of the url. If you really want to target a key phrase consider purchasing a microsite for that phrase. An inexpensive secondary web site that can be tailored to focus on a specific key phrase or concept. #9 Style In the grand scheme of things the "looks" of a web site in the classic sense are not really that important - honestly! once people have looked at a web site for a few minutes they will quickly discard their first impression and move immediately to asking - is this site giving me the information. You should also check your web site using a colour blind test to ensure that visitors with the various types... #10 Images If you are selling something that has a visual representation - then professional looking photography is key. Even a multi-million dollar resort will not look good if the photographs are amateurish. If you care about what you have to sell, then it's worth investing in some professional photographs to show people what you have. Top Ten Tips for Building a Profitable Web Site #1 Don’t hide what you sell In many instances, the "content" that visitors want is information about the product they want to buy. If you make it difficult to find your shopping area, if your pages take a long time to load, or if visitors can't find your order form, they will either give up or go shop in your competitor's online store. #2 Make it look professional It wasn't long ago, that just having a web site was enough to make a small businesses and home businesses look more professional. It didn't much matter what the web site actually looked like. But that's changing. While there are still some pretty ugly web sites that are relatively successful, customers, for the most part expect a company's web site to be as neat and professional looking as their printed sales literature and marketing materials. Anything less than a professional façade for your online shop, will make your business look small and unreliable. #3 Make your site easy to navigate Businesses and consumers today have little time to waste. If they can't find what they want quickly on your site they'll move on. To help them find their way around, put a table of content (navigational bar, navbar) on your home page. Include a search function for the web site as well. #4 Encourage browsing and impulse buys Retail stores get you to purchase more merchandise by putting sale merchandise at some distance from the cash register (so you have to walk through the store and see more things you may want to buy). They also increase sales by putting items that make good impulse buys in places that you pass through to get out of the store. Fast food stores and supermarkets often have candy and magazines near the check out counter. #5 Suggest add-on sales One of the easiest ways to increase sales is to let customers who are about to make a purchase know about related products they may want to buy. If your shopping cart software allows it, include one or two links to related products from the shopping cart screen. If you can’t easily do that, include the link to related products on a thank you page. #6 Give them ordering choices Not everyone is comfortable giving out credit card information over the Internet, and not everyone likes to shop with a credit card. To maximize your sales, be sure you give customers alternate methods for making a purchase. In addition to your online order form, provide a way for people to order by telephone, by fax and by mail. Make those options easy to find, too. If your customer has to hunt for ways to make a purchase, you'll lose sales. #7 Tell them how to reach you Customers want to know who you are and how they can contact after they've made a purchase. And they want that information to be easy to find. If it isn't they may question your honesty or credibility and move on to a competitor's web site to make their purchase. You can avoid that trap by by having a "contact us" button on every page of your web site. The "Contact us " button can lead to a web page that lists your business name, business email address, telephone, fax and other information customers may need to know. If you don't want to take the calls yourself, have an answering service take them for you. #8 Include a feedback form A feedback form serves three purposes. First, it gives your customers another way to reach you. Second, it lets you know what customers think about your products and services and what they wanted but can't find. Finally, the feedback form is good for public relations. Having it on your site will help customers form an impression of your company as one that cares what it's customers have to say. #9 Read and answer email at least once a day One of the leading attractions of the Internet is its immediacy. You can find information, shop for products, send and receive letters, place orders, send invoices, view pictures, and access documents 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But that's also one of the leading disadvantages of the web - at least for web site owners. Because the web and online services are available 24 hours a day, visitors expect them to be staffed around the clock, too. If they have a question, they expect to get a response in hours, rather than days as they might if they sent a question to your company using traditional mail. #10 Help people who stumble into your web site find their way back When visitors find your web site, they may save or print some of your information to read at a later time. When they find that information later on, they may want to return to your site. To make sure they can find their way back, be sure that every page on your site includes the name of your web site, your phone number and your URL on the bottom of the page. Under Construction |
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