How to make your website more successful

1. Have a Unique Selling Proposition

People never visit just one site to buy a product. They compare prices and features. Being the cheapest option isn't necessarily the best solution, people also want ’service’ or a sense of cool or just greater usability. The iPhone isn't at all the cheapest solution on the market and Apple’s service can leave a lot to be desired, but it has the add-on value of being ‘cool’ and extremely versatile.

Understand that your product, service and company will be compared to others. Therefore, you need to show why you are different, and why people should choose your product over others.

2. Content is King

Good content does several things. First of all, it informs your clients about your product. Second of all, it helps them to explore all the different facets of your business. They might arrive looking for one thing on your website and discover another product or service they weren’t aware of. And content helps you to be found in the search engines. Google and Yahoo really do nothing else but analyze content on the web and then try to match people’s searches with the content that is the most informative and useful to the searcher.

If you want to learn more about content for your website, visit our article on creating effective content.

3. Have a Powerful Call to Action

It is not enough that a user finds what he or she is looking for on your site and wants the product. The user must know what to do next. And it needs to be right there and easy to use. If you prominently feature buying options in your content, you will promote more impulse purchases, if you prominently feature contact details in your content, you will see an increase in people contacting you. Learn more about Calls to Action and creating a marketing funnel for your website.

4. Accessibility

Make your website compatible with all the different operating systems and web browsersavailable. Somebody visiting your website in FireFox or the Opera browser should still see your website correctly. People who use a Mac instead of a PC must see your website the proper way. Many website owners visit their website only on their PC with the Internet Explorer browser and aren’t aware that people who use a different browser or system might not be seeing their website correctly, or might find that certain menus don’t work.

People with disabilities make up a large percentage of the population. You can increase your sales by that percentage by making your site more accessible to people who may have an issue that make it hard for them to buy your product. A visitor might be visually impaired and require your website to display correctly in their special software. Deaf people who want to view your video content will need an option to turn on subtitles.

5. Test, test, test

Faults might be hidden in pages buried deep in your website. That page might however be the page that people land on first via a search in Google. Therefore it is important that you adequately test every page and make sure it displays and works correctly.

6. Communicate

Make sure your website offers capabilities and reasons for users to leave their email address or other contact details. It is important that you can send out communication materials to your customers from time to time to keep your company ‘front of mind’, to keep reminding them of your existence until the day comes that they need your services again.

A great way of doing this is by offering subscriptions to a newsletter, or a blog, or automatic updates on your latest special offers.

7. Know what your customers do on your site.

Use an analytics package that shows you how visitors found you, what they do once on your site and that keeps track of how many visitors eventually do what you want them to do: buy your product, contact you or subscribe to a service such as a newsletter. Knowing what makes visitors convert to a lead or sale and what turns them off is the most important knowledge you can accrue in order to learn how you can tweak your site to increase sales and lead generation.

8. Optimize your site for the search engines

SEO is the art of having your site come up in the search engines when your target audience types in keywords relating to your products and services. In fact, the search engines are the most likely way that you have found this page.

Understand what keywords your customers use and then use these words on your site to improve your visibility in the search engines. If you need help with this, you can always contact usor learn about our SEO services.

9. Advertise your site

Clearly feature your website on all your sales materials, from business cards to billboards. If your target audience sees your ad but needs more information before they buy your product, then your website can be a great information tool.

Also make sure you offer search as an option on your site, so that those people who type in your website address but are looking for a specific product or service, can easily conduct a search for that item.

10. Have a professional looking website

Looks do matter. Professional design builds trust. People will project the feeling they get from your website onto your company. If your website looks good, they will have a better feeling about doing business with you. This in turn will increase the number of visitors that convert to customers. in an earlier article we discussed how to choose a web designer.