Make Your Website Work FOR You

This was originally posted in December 2006. I went back over it and realized you could really benefit from this information and several others on the same topic. I think you’ll enjoy my revisions of those earlier posts, and wanted to share them with you in my latest series, starting today. Let me know how this perspective influences the way you look at your business website! ~Shari

Effective Results-Driven Websites

Is your website 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 website isn’t performing as needed, there’s a reason for it. Let’s look at some common reasons that websites perform poorly. We’ll break this down over several posts, one reason at a time.

An Undefined or Un-communicated Website Purpose:

Whether your website’s purpose is to provide information, collect leads or sell product, realize that it’s only one tool in your marketing arsenal … but one of the most important.

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

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

Does it answer the questions your visitor wants to know?

Perform a Page-by-Page Analysis

Next, take a look at your landing pages. If the purpose of your landing page is to create leads, does everything on that page work toward answering the questions of a prospect? Does it match the stage of the buying process of your prospect?

For example, we recently rewrote content for a b2b client after realizing that the copy was misaligned with the sales cycle. The old copy had a tone of convincing the prospect that the product was needed, but viewers of this page would not have needed convincing. They were ready to buy and looking for the best solution from the best company. Different purposes – totally different copy!

Authenticity:

There’s not one single area of business or of life that cannot be improved by aligning purpose with practice. My purpose here continues to be to bring you useful, actionable marketing tips. Staying true to that purpose is part of being authentic – another value important to thinking visitors to your website.

Think about the websites you visit, the newsletters you subscribe to, and the businesses or individuals on Facebook and Twitter that you enjoy following. Are there one or two that stand out, whose updates you don’t want to miss, whose emails you ALWAYS open? Why is that?

For me, those emails resonate with my values or provide information that I really do need – and they stay on target with authenticity. It starts on the website and permeates their entire online presence.

If you’d like help reviewing your website, or are ready for a website redesign or even fresh copy, give me a call at 920-364-0261 or visit our website marketing strategies page at Zero To Sixty Marketing.

Next up in this series, we’ll be talking about search engine relevance. If you’re not receiving our email newsletter, be sure to subscribe!

Related Posts:
Is Your Website Invisible?
What is Your Website Visitor Looking For?