3 Ways to Avoid Some of the
Biggest Website Mistakes!
By Shannon Kavanaugh
The website
has solidified its place in every marketing plan. In fact, we can't think of
the last marketing plan we did or reviewed where the website was not front and center to the success of the program. Whether used
to communicate, educate, sell, and/or distribute the company's products or
services, the website has become a must have.
But having a website is not the be-all, end-all.
Study after study shows too many of you are not optimizing this important tool.
The site may offer loads of content, but does not capture the visitor
information for later marketing efforts. The site may gather prospect
inquiries, but the inquiries are never responded to. The site may start off
with a bang, yet quickly becomes stale—not inspiring return visits or
referrals. The site may have continually updated content, but cannot be found
on the search engines or has many user experience issues.
To avoid these common, not to mention costly,
mistakes you must:
WORK it. The key things you must think about to ensure your
website is working for you are: design, content, and capture mechanisms. When
considering design be sure you truly are considering
your audience. In fact, consider surveying your target's favorite sites and
review those sites for design direction. For example, our studies show
technical audiences favor content strongly over a "polished" look and
feel, where the business audience prefers a balance between the two. Adding
value added content (case studies, articles, white papers, quick tips, etc.) is
quite possibly the best way to work your website, but where most sites fail is
in the capture. Make sure you have a registration process in place. If you're
offering content for free, you should at least know who is accessing it.
OPTIMIZE it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques change
rapidly and staying on top of the SEO game can be exhausting. Yet, most
"shopping" today is done on the web and through the search engines.
Optimizing your site is a necessity—plain and simple. Download our FREE
SEO Checklist Download to make it easier for you to optimize your own site.
AUDIT it. We get so wrapped up in our own view of our website (and
all of its glory), we often miss the reality of how
our visitors view the site. For this reason, we recommend you have a third
party audit your site. A comprehensive website audit would include a complete review of every page
and would cover everything from user perceptions to content and functionality
mistakes. This is WELL worth the effort.
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