Ten Tips for Website Better Practice 1 Have a clear purpose and goals for your site How will you know if your site is successful if you don't know what you want it to achieve for your business? Do you want it to bring in new customers? Communicate a message or doctrine? Sell your products and services? Provide information to your customers? Build your brand and augment your advertising? Or something else? Once you understand your website's purpose and goals you can then create a design, functionality and some content focused on achieving those goals. 2 Understand your target market inside out A business that says they can be everything to everyone requires infinite resources to communicate with a massive market in hundreds of different ways. Find those customers in the market that your company can best service then discover everything you can about them. Determine what they look like, what they want and what you need to say and how to communicate that your company can best meet their needs. 3 Be consistent Use images, words and even sounds that are consistent with your brand and the key messages you need to communicate to your existing and potential customers. 4 Call customers to action If your products and services are designed to meet the needs of your special customer group then make sure you tell them on your website what they need to do do access them. 5 Use your website to contact your customers regularly Collect contact information like email addresses, phone numbers from people who are interested in what you offer. Popularity is precious. A subscription or membership list is a valuable asset for your business. It can attract advertisers, sponsors and other customers to your site and so be a good source of income. Create a mailing list of people who are interested in your specific offerings and contact them regularly so they always have your business in mind when the need arises. (Be sure to comply with anti-spam and privacy legislation when using mailing lists). 6 Optimise your site for different browser types Test your website with the major browser programs (Internet explorer, Firefox, Safari, Netscape, Mozilla, Kerberus and other linux platforms) to make sure your customers see your products and messages in the way you intended them. 7 Optimise for different download times Remember that some customers will use broadband, others will use dial-up on computers of different speeds. People will lose patience and you may lose an opportunity to communicate with them if they have to wait too long for your site to download. Use fast downloading images and simple pages. Provide options for different systems so that everyone has equivalent access to your useful information. 8 Make it easy for customers to use your website People browsing websites get bored very quickly. If they find your site overly complex or find it hard to find information - they will move on to the next site quick as a flash. Make it easier for customers by using clear, simple, short navigation menus; a search function; simple language and no jargon; internal links and for large websites - a site map. 9 Make sure your site is 'Search Engine Friendly' You can improve your rankings on search engines by good use of key words in the content and in metatags. Also create opportunities for reciprocal links with other websites in complimentary businesses. 10 Make good use of expert advice redoliveblue has experts in small business, marketing, design and web development who can help you achieve website best practice and create a website that drives your business to success. Call us today for help in planning, desiging and implementing your new website. |
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