Hot Ideas & Hot Air

Have you ever been to a website that, from the moment you arrive, your senses are on overload from the amount of data attacking you from the page?
Or, have you ever been to a website that, when you arrive, you have no idea where to go, what do look out or how to navigate because there is no direction?
Both of the above can destroy your website. You can have amazing webpages inside of your website, but if people can’t get past your homepage, they’ll never be seen.
The upside? These are both unbelievably easy to fix. And they are fixable in the same way!
 Start by pulling all of the text from your homepage onto a word document (this way you can cut and paste the information as it fits in the right areas). Now, create a bullet point list like the one below. These are the top 5 questions that I always ask my clients when we are re-working their pages.

1. What contact information is imperative to have? Give the reader an easy way to find your contact information. If someone is ready to call or contact you, do not make them hunt for your phone number or email. Put it at the top of every page. Do not make them scroll all the way to the bottom to find it.
2. What do I want them to do on my webpage? Make sure that your site map is easy to understand. If they are there to look at products, make sure there is a tab labeled ‘Products’. Make your website easy to use, and people will stick around longer.
3. What is my call to action? So, you got them to the homepage, now what? You must know what you want them to do, so they will know what to do. Make sure that your call to action is clear. If you want them to submit their information so you can send them a case study, make the form easy to see, easy to use and on every page. If you want them to call you now, say “Call us now! (xxx) xxx-xxxx”. Do not leave the reader guessing what to do, because more often than not, they won’t do what you want.
4. What keywords do people use to find my webpage? Your website needs to be optimized around the search terms that people use to find you. If you sell CRM software, and people are going to find your website by searching “CRM software” then wouldn’t it make sense that on your homepage, it should say something like “XYZ: Your home for the easiest CRM Software”? Make sure that whatever words people use most often to search for you are prevalent. If you can, run your website through a program like WebCEO, it will tell you exactly how to optimize your page around the words that you want to use.
5. Who are your readers? If you sell to both sales people and an IT audience, you may need different leads for them to get to different areas of your website, even though you are selling the same product. Not everyone buys the same way, and you need to know how your readers buy, and cater to this.

Now that you have all of this information, organize it into boxes, with easy to read sentences that are keyword rich and easy to understand for all of your visitors. Once that is done, you have your webpage! All other ‘about us’ information (what you do, how you do it, etc) can go on other pages. Create an about us page, a philosophy page and keep them all separated, this way people can navigate as they see fit and read what they want.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 11:56 am and is filed under Entrepreneur Excellence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.