What to Consider in a Superior Business Website

Your website has a much greater impact on your business than you may realize. It is therefore necessary to make sure your website has a professional appearance, is user friendly, and is regularly updated to reflect changes in your products/services as well as those of your customers.

Possible things to consider include the following:

Does your website show that your company is unique and successful?
Visitors to your site will typically stay for only a few seconds if they are not engaged by what they see. This first impression should convey a clear and concise message about who you are and what makes you different from your competitors. Visitors are enticed by such things as an attractive, professional layout, well-defined and understandable listings of products/services, and easy access to more detailed information. To make certain your website has superior quality, compare it to those of other business sites of a similar nature.

Is your website content persuasive?
The website content should be clearly presented. The information must never leave visitors in doubt about meaning; confusing people will drive them away. It is best to be as brief as possible, and to avoid complex wording or sentence construction. Bullets and subheadings may be useful in conveying a lot of information quickly.

Can visitors to your website quickly find the information they need?
When visitors come to your home page, it is essential that they easily identify areas of interest and get to relevant information fast. This is facilitated by an intuitive user-interface, a sitemap, and well-organized content. Your site can be creative and exciting, but it must be easily navigable by all potential customers. If you have a lot of content and numerous web pages, you may want to consider drop down, pop-up, or fly-out menus making your site easier to navigate.

Is your website generating sales leads?
It is in your best interest to provide ways on every page of the website for visitors to volunteer contact information, which you can follow-up on. One way to stimulate more customer contact information is to furnish further information to interested parties in regular newsletters or website update announcements.

Can target customers find your website using search engines?
The best website has little value if no one comes to visit it. The movement of traffic to your website is of vital importance.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves various internet marketing and advertising techniques to make sure that people are directed to your site. Two of the techniques involved are Search Engine Marketing (SEM)- the practice of getting your website found; and Search Engine Advertising (SEA)- setting up paid advertisements on search engines – typically cost per click.

Is it easy to update and maintain your website?
The content management and posting tools now available are of great assistance even to non-programmers so that in a quick and easy way they can update the more dynamic sections such as news, events, and other frequently updated features. Updating the website on a regular basis is a must for any business.

CONCLUSION:
Implementing the ideas discussed above should get you well on your way to constructing a website that does the job. Since the ultimate aim of your business website is to generate business, a website that does not contribute to this effort needs to be changed so that this can and does happen.

To learn more, please visit our CompuKol Communications Professional Website Assessment services page.