Putting up a website is an every day occurrence for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Unfortunately there are some common mistakes made on many websites that can detract from
products and services offered, and often times cause a loss of income without your even knowing it.Here are some hard and fast rules for maximizing responsiveness of your website:
1. Make most of your entry page. Be sure first page on your site provides a compelling reason for visitor to explore further. If your main page is cluttered with links, banners and ads, it may be too confusing for a visitor to figure out why they should stay. Conversely, if main page doesn’t provide much in way of benefits or interest, there is also no reason for your visitor to delve further into site. So keep it simple but not bare and be sure it is easy to understand and navigate.
2. Check your text mechanics. This should go without saying, however you should double and even triple check spelling, grammar and coherency of your pages. Even most professional looking pages will loose visitors and sales if there is bad grammar or spelling mistakes everywhere they turn.
3. Give them some meat. Be sure to provide useful content on your site that is related to products and services you offer. Try to teach your visitors something. Create informational articles, whitepapers, FAQs or news items that are related to what your visitor wants. When you teach a prospect something, you gain respect, trust and credibility. These are key components in gaining a paying customer!
4. Stay Focused This should also go without saying, however there are many sites out there that try to be a “catch all” for their visitors. With this strategy they are hoping that providing many different links, banners and miscellaneous information will help them to increase their chances of making some kind of sale. All this does however is confuse visitor - especially if they found your site by typing in a specific keyword into a search engine.
Instead, strategically focus your content, links and advertisements on related products and services. Providing continuity in this manner will help to draw visitors further into your site, and provide you with many more opportunities to “sell” them.
5. Use internal promotions. If you must have banner and button advertisements on your site, then make sure to advertise yourself as well as others! Having some advertisements that lead offsite is fine if you make money from them and if it is enough income to justify both loss of space and loss of your hard earned visitor. Otherwise, use ad space to strategically draw visitors to additional pages of your website, make purchases on your site, or sign up for your mailing list. 6. Usability Consistency Use same design, layout, menu system, colors and effects throughout your website. If a visitor sees one page with navigation system at top, and next page with navigation at bottom, they will become confused and frustrated - thus not bothering to stick around no matter how badly they wanted your information, services or products.
