I am sure it’s safe to say that all small businesses want a good website. And they want it to attract the attention of potential customers. Well here are my personal tips, developed over many years as an Aberdeen web designer, to make the site the best possible.
Invest In Your Content: Your site must have quality content that is unique and not duplicated. If you have a lot of mirror sites your Google ngs will be lower than if your site was unique. If you are planning on updating your site frequently use the CMS system WordPress. If you’re not going to be adding a lot of content regularly, then you will want to make sure your site is more static and responsive.
Love Your Layout Layout – Use a standard layout where your business logo is in the upper left, or use a banner logo where it is at the top of the page. Make sure you have the menus at the top of the page as well with clear page listings. Make sure to include a contact page and make sure it is easily accessible. Do not get carried away with menu items, just put down the menu items that you need. Use the K.I.S. method when it comes to the menus: Keep It Simple
Be Ruthless About Efficiency – When people are traveling they may not have the state-of-the-art equipment or internet connection to load up those graphic intensive sites, with huge pictures, and flash video etc. On the main page keep your graphics to a minimum. Include graphics do not misunderstand me. All text should be broken up with graphic images, but do not make them full-page, or video etc. Just keep it simple. Many users will give up on sites that do not load within the first 30 seconds of their search.
Get A Memorable Domain – Nothing says professional like a domain with your NAME in it. Would you shop at www.fredswebblog/index.asp?p=182? Or would you shop at www.website-skins.com? Nothing says you are serious more than treating your site like a serious business. I can not stress this enough, your web domain is YOUR STORE!
Set Up Lead Generation – Every website should have a way to capture leads. Lead generation is important because not every customer is on Z of your A-Z scale. So if you do not keep following up with your customers then you will only get sales from about 10%. Only 1 of every 10 customers that you see is ready to buy Right Now. So the other 90% need some more information or time to decide.
Give Them Offers – Every business site needs a FREE offer. These free offers will help you generate more leads. Free offers help put people on the A-Z scale. Free offers will help increase the amount of business you will generate vs. your competition especially if he is not generating leads, or has any free offers.
Keep In Touch – Going back to that A-Z scale, every business needs to have a follow up method to keep in touch with their customers. If you have someone on the A-Z scale and you keep following up with them they are more likely to buy with you because you kept in touch, rather than blew them off cause they did not buy right then and there. E-mail marketing is a powerful tool and is not used to its fullest extent.
Implement Automation – Nothing will kill your dream faster than you have to manage your business in real life, and online as well. Make your web presence as automated as possible. If you had 10 E-mail contacts every day you had to write the emails for, you would be in over your head, you could always do form emails, but they still take time for you to open, copy, send, etc… Imagine a system where you can have the signup be totally automated, and the moment they sign up they receive an E-mail from you personally thanking them for their interest. You send them the free tide book or whatever your offer is, and every 3-4 days you continue to check up with them by E-mail to see if they had any questions, or if there was anything you could do for them in their decision-making process. Would you buy from that guy? or the other guy down the street that never called, never E-mailed, and only sounded like he wanted your money?
Now with these ideas in mind, your small business can flourish above and beyond your competition cause you will have a strong online machine helping you generate customer traffic, and generate leads.Go get em!