Do not Waste Money on that Website
If you’ve already got a website and you don’t know how effective it is, or perhaps you’ve finally decided to use a website to grow your business, you’ll need to answer a few questions before you can have any chance of success online. An effective online presence requires forethought and planning. The questions that follow will help your website be successful.
- All websites need a goal. Do you know what your goal is with your website? Depending on if your site is designed around generating sales or leads, or distributing information all affects the structure of your website. If you don’t plan accordingly, your site won’t be as effective at doing what you want it to do.
-Who is your target audience? You must target the language, pictures, and content of your website towards your target audience. Don’t assume everyone has the same level of understanding that you do.
- What is your traffic funnel for your site? Once someone finds your homepage, where do you want them to go next? This question is related to a different question, in that your website’s goal will determine the preferred traffic pattern for your site. Whatever your goal, make your website navigation simple and clear. Fancy animated links are occasionally confusing, and the search engines hate them.
- Does your website call people to take action? Unless your site is purely informational, the visitors to your site will need to be urged to take action- buy now, click here, sign up now. Whatever it is, make sure you are directing your visitors to take action. Otherwise, they will most likely just click wander and click away from your site.
- What will you use to determine the success of your website? Are you looking for sign-ups to your newsletter? Are you basing success on sales figures? Perhaps you want people to visit a brick and mortar store. Whatever it is, you will need to be able to measure whether or not your website is working for your business. That way you can make educated changes to your website based on real figures and statistics rather than just assumptions.
Regardless of if you’re designing your own website or are paying a professional to design one for you, you need clear answers to each of these questions before taking the next step. The clearer and more concrete your answers are, the more effective your website will be. And we all know what a more effective website means- taking your business to the next level!
