Using Your Website Efficiently

You have your business up and running and of course, an essential part of your business is your website - it’s open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, always there for customers to see. But does your site lead customers to sales?

Your website should be user friendly in that it doesn’t confuse users, lead them to pages that give them unnecessary information or wow them too much with technology that is slow to load on the page.

Your website should hit the right balance of being informative, with enough text to keep the search engines interested and without overpowering the reader. Consideration should be given to the reasons why people go to your website, and you should check that they can carry out the tasks they expect to do; try it for yourself to find out.

-          Is your site purely for information purposes about your product or service, and if so, how can you best display this? With a portfolio of your products? With a step by step guide about how your service works?

-          Are the menu headers clear and always visible?

-          Is it easy to get around the site, from one page to the next?

-          Should people be able to buy your products on line? Do you have a database incorporated to show all your products, and a facility for people to pay?

-          If you have properties to sell, is all the information well displayed, can customers keep a ‘wish list’ to refer back to easily, or print off details without problems?

-          If you have properties to rent for holidays, can they do this on line? Can they easily see when the property is available and how much it is?

-          Do you have all the necessary terms and conditions of sale and delivery for people to refer to?

-          Have a content managed page so you can quickly put up news of promotions, special offers and sales. It’s easy to do and you don’t have to depend on the web programmer to find time to do it.

Once you have captured a customer’s attention and they want to go ahead and contact you – to ask questions, to buy, or any other reason – can they find your contact details? These should be displayed well on every page, with a hyperlink to your email. If a customer has to find your ‘Contact Us’ page before they can get to you, then there is the risk that they lose the page right where they have made the decision to contact you has been made, and this disrupts the whole process.

Another point to remember is that your website is a 24 hour reflection of your business. Therefore, all the information should be as up to date as possible, there should be no ‘dead links’ where people go to pages that display an error, and the site should have easy navigation so that any pages clicked ‘back’ should also display the right information rather than a ‘timed out’ message.

Your website is also a great way of building up your potential customer database. Add a link to your site to ask people to sign up for your newsletter. This way you update your list and possibly increase sales. Make sure you do send out a newsletter, even if it is just twice a year, so that the user feels it was worth signing up.

Make sure your website is updated with interesting things to reaffirm your place in the market. Not only does this attract the attention of search engines, but users can find the information helpful. Add your press releases and advertising, and create a blog space where you can quickly update the site with messages, news and advice for users.

Your website should be designed well, with the user in mind, as well as within your corporate image. Make sure your website shows your logo and corporate colours so that users quickly identify that they have reached the right site as soon as they come to it.

About the authors:

Redline Company is a marketing company in Marbella, Spain specializing in doing what we call complete marketing  - info@redlinecompany.com  - www.redlinecompany.com