Website Check Up

Giving Your Most Valuable Tool a Check Up
One of the most important tools that you can put into action for your business is a well designed, carefully written and smartly organized website. So whether you are just now planning your first website – or you’re reading this in order to evaluate what you’ve been using up to now, our goal with this report is to help you give your website a complete check up.

To begin, let’s identify the role that a website plays in your business and look into how to make certain that it is fulfilling that role to the greatest extent possible. We’ll break the different key components of a successful website down and consider how they benefit you and your business as well as how they can be optimized to laser target your preferred customer base.

There is something that has to be said up front: For many small business owners, their first website has been or is being designed from dreams and visions they’ve treasured in their hearts for a long time.

Looking at it with a fresh perspective can be difficult or even a little painful. If you can understand this up front, it will be easier for you to work through your feelings on it. What’s most important for your long term business success is that you learn to look at your website from the consumer’s point of view instead of from your own.

Here’s an example:

Mark has been planning his break from corporate life for ten years. His dream of operating his own consulting business is finally coming true. He has been telling his wife and friends for years that he sees the new business as his ticket to freedom so he’s planning to build his business logo and website around a characterized ticket figure. He has envisioned this little cartoon character on every page of his site.

This character has huge personal meaning for him – but it has nothing to do with his consulting business and really isn’t at all appropriate for his target market. So someone has to tell Mark the hard truth – he needs to drop the character and pursue a more professional look for his website.

What does a website need to do?

Your website is a virtual storefront. It represents you and it represents your products and services. It speaks for you and if it has been put together right – it sells for you.

Of course, not every website has been designed to sell something, yet every website – every web page even – has a distinct purpose and should inspire a desired action in visitors.

What is YOUR website’s purpose?

Have you ever sat down and considered just what it is that you want your website to accomplish for you?

Will it sell a product?
A website that has been designed to sell a product has a pretty clear cut purpose.

Present the products in the best light possible.
Invite visitors to stay in touch with you through a mailing list.
Answer all potential questions about the product itself.
Provide details about shipping, returns and payment options.
Provide a clear pathway to purchase.
Make the sales process as simple for the buyer as technically possible.
Thank the customer for their purchase.

Will it sell a service?
A website that has been designed to sell a service also has a clear purpose.

Present the service in the best light possible.
Invite visitors to stay in touch with you through a mailing list.
Answer all potential questions about the service itself.
Provide details about service delivery and payment options.
Provide a clear pathway to purchase.
Make the sales process as simple for the buyer as technically possible.
Thank the customer for their purchase.

Will it provide useful content as its main purpose?
A content based site takes many forms but its main role is usually the delivery of high quality information. As the person who is providing the content, you usually have a goal in mind – there is something that you desire from those who come to consume your content. Therefore you want the website to:

Deliver the content attractively.
Invite visitors to stay in touch with you through a mailing list.
Establish your reputation for providing good content.
Promote affiliate links.
Promote related products and services of your own.

Will it offer users a source of community?
Some websites are designed to be a hub of interaction and so it is expected to:

Provide an attractive atmosphere for users.
Provide compelling content.
Invite visitors to become a member.
Collect appropriate information.
Provide a way for members to interact.

Your website may be a combination of any of the above.

You may offer both products and services and deliver useful content and provide a community – the question is – do your visitors understand clearly what it is that you have to offer them?

Some large websites that have many different purposes could benefit from a breaking down and separating of it’s different sections into different sites – but that’s not always the case, it all depends on how well you are delivering your message and how well your visitors are responding to it.

What are you communicating?

Every page of your website has a reason for existence. It has something to communicate. It has a job to do. So what is that job?
If you sell products, can a customer tell from the first page what you sell? If not, you're already in peril. The main page is for the customer. There should be a clear path to your products or services and immediately recognizable resources that they can explore to learn more about you and your business.
Let’s break all this down into chunks.

What elements are important for your website?

Graphics
Your web graphics (if you are using any) are the first things that your visitors notice.
Graphics should lend description to the site, not just decoration. A well designed header graphic tells customers a lot about your website.

There are hundreds of awesome free graphic sites, but don't be too quick to use free graphics on your main page. You want to create an original memory in the mind of your potential customer. Potential clients rarely buy from a site the first time they visit unless they are extremely motivated. But if your site makes an impression on them, they will remember what you offer and go back when they have a need for what you offer.
When remembering your website, chances are they have a very visual memory of what your site looked like – so even if they don’t happen to remember your URL, they’ll scan the search engines for ‘that site’ that they were at before. If your site looks like a hundred other sites, they might not remember you later. So use graphics to make an impression on visitors.

It can be worth the expense to buy an original web set from a graphic artist who will not sell the same graphics to anyone else.

Graphics include photographs of your products.

If you do not own a quality camera, consider borrowing one from a friend or budget in a session with a good photographer. Product images must be crisp and clean and well organized. Take some time to position items attractively for every shot. Later when you’re preparing the images for the web, take the time to crop and size each item appropriately.

Perhaps the most important graphic of all will be your headshot.

If you’re running a business that keeps you in the background, a photograph isn’t crucial, but most times it is very beneficial to have a recent picture of the person they are doing business with. In fact, if you’re positioning yourself as a reliable source of expertise, you’ll probably use your photograph on the main page.

Do take some time with this. Don’t crop your wedding photo and don’t use something so tiny that you can barely be recognized. Select a facial expression that conveys what you want visitors to know about you. IE: You’re friendly, you’re professional; you are a complete goofball. Whatever your purpose is in doing business let it come through in your photo.

Headlines
Headlines are attention grabbing statements that pull a visitor in and encourage them to read the information provided on a website.

There are a few things that headlines should not include:

Welcome messages or other greeting messages. (“Welcome to our Website” or “We’re so glad you found us.”)
Obvious statements. (“You’ve reached the website of John Doe.”)
Dull remarks about Products or Services. (“Check out our big selection!”)

Instead use headlines to engage your visitor in a conversation of sorts. A good headline has been written to speak directly to your target market.

It may be posed in the form of a question that they can say yes to. (Would You Like Me To Show You How You Can Save Time With Your…” )
It may make a statement that they will agree with. (“Pet Owners Want To Spend More Time Enjoying Their Pets And Less Time Cleaning Up After Them!”)
Or it may be something that creates curiosity. (“Nine out of Ten Men Say This Is One Sure Fire Way To Capture And Keep Their Attention”)

Copy
The text on your website is your ‘copy’. Remember, your website is communicating with potential clients and customers in your place so the text on your main page needs to tell them everything that you would have told them yourself if you were meeting them in person for the first time.

It’s not that you want to create an encyclopedia on the first page – but do provide them with a clear way to learn more and find what they need.. There are several ways to do this.

Create a ‘First Time Visitor’ page.
Create a Frequently Asked Questions database.
Offer a Help Desk System with clear directions for internet newcomers and existing customers.
Offer a Testimonials page where you archive all of your customer comments.
Create pages that describe your services and explain the purchase process.
Use an appropriate shopping cart system for products that allows you to organize products into useful and easy to search categories.

Remember, every page has a purpose. As you evaluate the text on each page – first identify the roll of that page.

For instance, the ‘About Me’ page exists to tell your visitors more about you, show them that you are someone that they would like to work with and create a sense of familiarity and trust. With that in mind – you know you need to share more than just your marital status and city of origin. You’ll want to share your personal and professional interests and achievements and include anything else that furthers your potential relationship with clients.

Product and Services Descriptions
This is an area of web copy that is often underserved by website owners. They rely too much on product images and fail to provide enough information about the product by text.

Look at each product and service that you offer and think of the questions and concerns that visitors may have about them and respond to them. Do not worry about being repetitive – more information is better than less.

Tell potential clients how they will be contacted about services and what kind of support they can expect. Anticipate their concerns and put their fears to rest.

Every time you get another email or telephone question about something a visitor could not find on the website – go and add the information in appropriate sections of the website. Eventually you will have a website that really does completely represent you in your absence.

Navigation

How is your site set up? Is everything centered right down the middle? Does your page run about six feet in height? You might not realize it but whatever you have displayed after the first couple of scrolls will probably never be seen. Do you have a smattering of images here, there and everywhere? It is very hard to know where and what to look for on a site like this. Most visitors will just give up and leave.

This is what you have to keep in mind: You know your website left, right and upside down. So unless you step outside your own perspective, you may assume that everyone else can navigate your site as well as you can. It would be a very good idea to invite someone who has never used your site before to visit and ask them to find the answers to a few common first time visitor questions.

For example:

What kind of shipping options do you offer?
What is your return policy?
Do you offer telephone support?
How long have you been in business?
Can you help me with __________? (Fill in the blank with something appropriate for your business.)

Choosing a Navigational Structure

There are lots of options for navigation on a website. Most commonly you see a navigation list on the left hand side of the website, though you will also see some sites with a horizontal navigation bar across the top of their site. The choice is yours but do choose just one – websites with navigation in more than one spot can be confusing for users.

To decide how to organize your website content, take some time and explore a few competitor’s websites and take note of what you like and do not like about how they have things put together.

If your site is going to grow over time you’ll want to make use of sub-directories (folders) in order to sort the content into easily accessed areas of the site. For example you might have a sub-directory for all of your articles, another for archived newsletters and another for product info. (This is not so much for your visitors as it is useful for you or whoever will be managing the website long term.)

How do you know if your website is serving you well?

Reading Statistics
A good website hosting company will provide you with useful statistics about your website traffic. There are questions you need answers to on a regular basis:

Where are my visitors coming from?
How long are they staying on the site?
Are they coming back?
What search engines are they using?
What search phrases (keyword terms) are they using?
What pages are they viewing?
What products are they looking at?
What page do they exit from the most?
Where are my visitors located geographically?
Add anything niche specific that your market needs to be tracking.

When you know a lot about your visitors you can make smart decisions about what you should add or what you should take away from it. You will learn things about your target market that you didn’t know previously.

A car parts seller created a website in order to expand his customer base but he limited shipping to US addresses only. After reviewing his website statistics over a period of six months he realized that he was receiving a large amount of traffic from overseas locations. He did some research and decided to offer international shipping for a trial period. Sales increased nearly 20% over the next month. He never would have considered an international market if it were not for what he learned from his stats.

If your hosting company doesn’t provide a useful stats program you can incorporate Google Analytics into your website. This is a free service and the stats you generate are top notch.

Determining your Conversion Rate
Since every website has a purpose, there must be something that you want your visitor to do when they come to your site.

Buy your Product.
Use your Services.
Hire you as a Coach or Consultant.
Join your Membership.
Sign up for your Mailing List.
Subscribe to your Podcast.
Enter your Contest.

The percentage of your visitors who take the desired action is your conversion rate.

You have 1000 visitors in a month.
47 People Make a Purchase
47 divided by 1000
That is a .047 conversion rate – a little more than 4%.
(Not bad! 3% is considered about average for a product site.)

You have 500 visitors in a month to your newsletter opt in site.
149 Subscribe to your Newsletter
149 divided by 500
That’s a .298 conversion rate – 29%
(That’s great! A 30% conversion for an opt in ‘squeeze’ page is considered very good.)

When a website is new and doesn’t have a lot of steady traffic, it is difficult to determine how well it is really doing – but in general you want to see at least one purchase for every 100 visitors. If you’re not seeing this, you’ll want to evaluate and see if you can spot areas to improve.

Last Thoughts

As time goes by you’ll learn a lot about your target market. There may be items and services you offer that they have no interest in so you’ll decide to drop them from your inventory. If you’re smart, you’ll carry on a steady dialog with your list members so that you will know what they’re looking for that they haven’t found with you.

Your business website isn’t like a print brochure that you have 10,000 prints made of – it’s a living business tool that can grow and respond and adapt to your market’s needs.

Now that you’ve taken the time to give your website a check up – you are equipped to continue taking its pulse and making certain that it is serving you and your business to its greatest ability.