|
|
|
Is Your Site Equal To The Competition
|
There are many advertising sites available for website owners and we encourage owners to take advantage of the traffic and resource this provides. The downfall is that you will not be the only one advertising. Most likely you will be competing with several other businesses and if so you need to ensure that your website stands out as visitors traverse the lists. If your website isn't designed as well as the competition you will most likely fail to produce results valid enough to continue spending with advertisers.
Think of it this way. Lets imagine you are a potential customer visiting an advertising site and there are 10 businesses listed. Like most consumers you want options and value so you plan on visiting several to look for deals, options, and what not.
The first site you visit is nicely designed, well laid out, and full of usefull information. The second site you visit has amazing pictures of the activities you could enjoy, easy to navigate, has good pricing, and looks inviting.
And finally the third. As soon as you open the page you see a difference. Graphics that look outdated, elements out of place, bad colors, basically nothing to inspire you to continue. Customers in this day and age have come to expect high quality from websites. The days of throwing up a webpage and finding a happy audience are gone. You must be on equal ground as the competition, if not above them, in order to succeed in todays world wide web.
1. You need to keep up with the competition.
In business no-one stands still for very long, for fear of getting left behind. Almost all businesses now rely on the Internet to some measures, from providing product and service information, to accepting online orders. Visit your competitors' sites and see how your online presence compares. If your website isn't as good as or better than theirs, then you've work to do - it needs to be!
2. Your current site looks outdated.
Websites are like any other type of marketing, or like your physical storefront itself. After a while they start to look outdated, and out of touch with the rapidly moving online marketplace. Like a lick of fresh paint, revamping your website can instill a new life into your business and show your visitors that you're as fresh and dynamic as ever. Remember, first impression counts!
3. Your site is too hard to navigate.
One of the most common complaints from website users is that sites are hard to navigate, due to confusing or inappropriate navigation menus, or lack of suitable search facilities. Usually the site owner is too close to the everyday operations to spot these problems. Encourage feedback from your users, or employ web analytics to identify potential problems within your web pages, such as abandoned orders, unfinished product tours, or unvisited pages. Finding and resolving the underlying problems will inevitably result in happier visitors and more sales.
4. Your site content has grown unwieldy.
Lots of websites were initially designed with a small amount of content in mind, and the menu and navigation reflects this. However, over time new products and services have been added to your portfolio, recent projects added to your gallery, and after a while your site can descend into unstructured chaos. The solution is usually to redesign the site from scratch to suit the evolving content, making it much easier for your visitors to quickly find what they're looking for.
5. Your site doesn't appear on the search engines.
People usually invest in websites to publicize their products and services, but often their sites are nowhere to be found on the search engines. There are lots of reasons why sites fail to rank highly (or at all!), but frequently basic design flaws are at fault. If search engines find your site hard to navigate they will most likely ignore it. Many of the elements of effective search marketing, such as effective use of titles, keywords and headings, are best addressed as part of a site revamp.
6. Your site has lots of broken or out of date links.
New content is often added to existing websites in a disorganized, ad-hoc manner, and old content is moved about or removed altogether. This can result in broken links or links pointing to outdated information. Not only does this confuse and annoy visitors, but search engines, which use these links to index your site, get lost and move on without listing your site. The answer is often to re-organize the site's content, fixing all links in the process.
7. Your customers have told you to redesign it.
As a business owner you will appreciate the value of customer feedback. If someone told you that your shop smelt bad, you'd certainly get it sorted promptly. Similarly, listen carefully to what your online visitors say about their experiences within your website. In fact, ask them what they like and dislike about it. A simple feedback exercise can yield surprising results, and if you quickly and effectively address any issues then you'll win more customers, instead of losing it by ignoring them.
A website redesign probably doesn't cost as much as you think. In this current tough economic climate, business owners have to work hard to convince people to spend their hard-earned cash with them. Investing wisely on revamping your online presence will reassure potential customers that you are a successful, dynamic business and that your customers' buying experience is important to you.
More Articles
|
|
|
|
|
|