A website is the most important marketing asset that you can have for the business. It is the first-contact point for most customers and often it is used for marketing campaigns. It is vital that the setup of your website should be stable not only for aesthetics but for online marketing. Below are some questions to ask whether your website is up to par:
What is the purpose of the website?
What is it that you are trying to achieve with your website? Are you just following others who have websites? Does your website have a goal? This might be a simple question to answer but it is the core of the whole implementation. Often people follow the bandwagon and the trend and may be wasting money without establishing a purpose. This is one pitfall of websites.
What am I supposed to do with my website?
It is obvious that one thing you want to happen is get people to visit your website. However, you should establish what the next step would be when they do visit. Do you want to entice them to buy a product or avail of a service? Is it easy to contact or call you by having information available on the site? Do you want to let them subscribe to your newsletter? It is a good practice to ask others what they expect from the website. Once they view your homepage, they click on some other page.
If your website organized in a concise manner? Is it easy to use? A difficult website with unclear navigation and cluttered pages is turn-offs for most people. They will most likely exit and not visit your website again.
Is your navigation easy to follow?
Some websites have unusual site layout for navigation or menu. People expect some form of navigation: top, sidebar, footer, and others. It is expected that links to the Contact Us page and other pages should be in place. The Homepage should be accessible for all pages.
What are your products or services?
Site visitors should be able to immediately understand what the website is all about and what you have to offer. It is important to highlight the benefit of your product and services rather than going after competitors and justifying why you are much better.
Can customers contact you easily?
You should establish how clients can communicate with you. A contact us page with a form that goes to a working email is one good practice. You can place the contact phone or mobile number on all pages as well. Some businesses with physical stores include directions or a map to the store.
Do you have a secure website?
Make sure your site is secure with an SSL certification and let you customers know about this. Avail of third parties such as PayPal for payments. Customers should feel safe when transacting with you.
Are you integrated with social media?
An added marketing tool is integrating your website with social media accounts. This is not only great with sharing information but also for page ranks. This is very easy. All that needs to be done is have social media share buttons and link this to your accounts. You can have Facebook comments propagated on your site page. Twitter and LinkedIn increase the exposure of your content as well.
Do you have a user-friendly mobile site?
People do not just browse the internet through desktops or laptops. With smart phones nowadays many use these to do search and other internet-based tasks. You should see to it that your website is ready for mobile use and that it can easily be read.
