10 Ways to Improve Your Business Website - Part 1
Do you want visitors to stay on your site for longer. Maybe make more enquiries? Or buy more products and services from you?
If the majority of your visitors are clicking away within a few brief seconds (bad bounce rate), it’s a sign that your website is not very customer (or user) friendly. Here are some tips to make your website more effective for your business.
1. Keep Your Language Clear, Concise and Simple
You might be surprised to discover that the average reading age for someone in the
Aim to be concrete and descriptive and avoid jargon - nobody cares if you can "leverage your synergies". Ever!
If your message is unclear, your visitors don’t understand what you’re telling them, so they won’t see the benefits of doing business with you!
To Do: Test out some of your content on http://www.read-able.com and check out the reading age your visitors need to understand your website. Is it below 14 years of age?
2. Turn Down the “Sizzle” Factor
No matter how great your site looks, people won't wait 5 minutes for a plug-in to load some funky website features.
Forcing someone to wait for this sort of information can seem very rude and it interrupts them as they explore your site.
What’s more, most people don’t like to have to install extra software just to make your website “work”. They worry about getting viruses, “warez” and falling prey to phishing (fraud) scams.
You won’t make yourself popular if you force people to load your “special panoramic photo viewer” to see some basic snaps of your products or services.
Only use new technology when it really enhances your chances of meeting your business goals without annoying visitors in the process.
On balance, it’s a good idea to stick to standard HTML/CSS as it’s quick to load, reliable and has the added bonus of being search engine friendly too.
To Do: Review your site and identify any funky features you’ve added “because you can” rather than because they “add value” to your customers? Are they easy to remove?
3. Always Add a Logo and Tagline to Your Site
Put your logo where it's easy to find - that usually means the upper-left of the screen. People expect to see a logo there, that’s also linked to the home page. They like it when you make their lives easy. They can explore as much as they want and know they can always get back to a familiar starting point by clicking on the logo.
Make sure you add a meaningful tagline (– a few brief words that explains the benefit of visiting your site e.g. “The cheapest, largest range of Martial Arts DVDs on the Planet”)
To Do: Print out your tagline and logo and ask up to 5 friends “What does our logo and tagline mean to you?”. Does it match up with your intended message?
4. Ensure Visitors Can Make Sense of Your Website Within 4 Seconds Max
If visitors don’t understand what your site is “for” within 4 seconds, or what they need to do first, they’ll go straight back to the search engine to find an easier site to use.
Just like a turtle defends itself from hungry predators with a tough outer shell making it too much trouble to bother with, you can drive visitors away from your website by making it difficult to get to the key information (the meat) your customers really want to see.
Watch out you’re not making things difficult with confusing menus, counter-intuitive steps, poor search or poor styling.
To Do: Ask 5 people to visit your website and tell you their instant “gut reaction” to what your site’s for and what they can do there? Is your site purpose clear?
5. Keep Hyperlinks Consistent & Easy to Identify
When it comes to web pages, the underlined, blue link is a staple of the web. A little artistic license is ok, but consider at least making your links either blue or underlined. Links should stand out, and you should use them sparingly enough that they don't disrupt your content. Always change the colour of your visited links in your main body copy so it’s easy for people to identify something they’ve already looked at, just in case they want to review something again during their visit.
Try to avoid using “Click Here” as link text (unless you’re an internet marketer writing for internet marketers). Always use specific link text, e.g.
“Annual Report 2010” rather than “Click Here to view the Annual Report 2010”
To Do: Give your links a health check and make sure they are easy to spot and intuitive, clear and predictable for your customers to work with.
In the next article, I'll cover 5 more easy ways to improve the effectiveness of your business website.
