Express Marketing Memo

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Is your web site working for you?

Is it producing leads or sales? As many as you’d like? Or is it a monthly expense with little to nothing to show for itself?

Effective online marketing isn’t mysterious. If your web site isn’t performing as needed, there’s a reason for it. Let’s look at some common reasons that web sites perform poorly.

Web site Purpose:

Whether your web site’s purpose is to provide information, collect leads or sell product, realize that it’s only one tool in your marketing arsenal … but a very important one to most businesses.

So let’s start there, what exactly is the purpose of your web site? How does it help you meet your business goals?

Without a clearly defined purpose, even the most highly promoted web site will not succeed. Have a fresh set of eyes review your web site and ask, “Does my web site accomplish this purpose?”

Search Engine Relevance:

At least 80% of all new traffic is the result of a search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, or one of the lesser search engines. Each search is performed on keyword phrases relevant to what is being sought.
• Do you know what keyword phrases people would use when they’re looking for what you offer?

• Are those phrases woven into the headlines, body text, hyperlinks, and lists on your web pages?

• Are they used in your META tags, including page titles, description, and keywords?

• Were they taken into consideration when you built the navigation for your site?

• Does your site have incoming links from other relevant sites?

• Have you added alt text to all of your images?

Your search engine results to a large extent depend on positive answers to these questions.

Visual Appeal vs. Ease of Use:

Flash animation on your home page might look great, but it stands in the way of web site results. Search engines don’t see past the Flash, so all those great keyword phrases are wasted. And since many people still use a dial-up connection, do you really want to slow down their search for your quality web content?

Photos not optimized for the web will slow down the loading of your web pages. Rather than wait for large photo files to load, many people will simply move on to another site.

Navigation must be clear, easy to follow, and duplicated on every page of your web site. Without navigation on every page, a visitor may end up landing on a page that goes nowhere, without any idea of how to get to any other page on your site. Make it easy for your visitors to find what they’re looking for.

In future posts, we’ll take a more in-depth look at each of these components of an effective, results-driven web site.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, December 10th, 2006 at 9:38 am and is filed under Web site effectiveness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.