1. First Impressions! Think About It!
In today’s day and age your website is one of the first places a potential customer will go to get an idea of who or what you’re about. If someone gets to your website and they are not impressed in the first split second you will lose them. Google actually has a measurement for how often this happens, called a bounce rate. People are fickle and easily change their opinion based on things they see and where they see them. A perfect example of this is the traditional Yellow Pages directory — the only way you could get noticed above your competitors was to buy a bigger ad or make it more noticeable through graphics.
Today however, you have an entire platform to make the first impression that you desire and the ability to put the right foot forward on your terms. If you are not happy about what you are viewing for yourself then chances are your clients and potential customers probably won’t be either. Look at your site and ask yourself, Is this the impression I am trying to make?
If the statement above is true for you than there are two reasons why it would be a good time to have your website redesigned. The first reason being is at the time of this post most of the major smart phone (OS & Hardware) providers like Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Blackberry have had an enjoyable to use web-ready smart phones for about five years. Sites built before this time or during the release of these devices will probably not stand up to browsing via these devices.
With smart phones quickly becoming one of the most commonly used browsing devices, a web site that is functional on the above mentioned OS & Hardware is almost critical because if a person is trying to get to your website via their mobile, it probably means they want to know about and contact you immediately. Can they easily do that with your current site? The second reason has more to do with point number one — first impressions. A site designed before smart phones is probably dated and give people the sense that if your site is not moving forward with the times, then neither is your business.
2. If your website is not making you money!
The way I see it is that a website has two ways of making you money — a product page or a service page. The web is your most powerful marketing tool that you possess. With the current level of web technology where it is, it has become a common practice to track people coming to your website and their conversion to a phone call or sale. If your site strictly falls under the providing service side of things, it should be easy enough to ask each time the phone rings how people found you. If they still say the Yellow Pages then it’s clear you need some assistance with the your business website.
If you site falls under that of a product page and you are not making any money, then that becomes an even bigger problem. This could be a result of various things including a bad first impression to people not being able to find what they are looking for. That’s covered in the “your site is lost and blurry” topic. This is what you need to know: from a business standpoint, like any marketing you do, you should be able to track your website and how it generates income for your business. If you can not do this at the minimum you should probably look at having your site updated.
Secondly, if you have a product page, it should be making you money — period. It’s a product page. Why have a website if it is not generating an income for you? Would you keep a store open if no one walked through the door and bought anything? Probably not. The thing is with the reduced overhead of running an online store people take their eye off the ball and don’t put the necessary effort into turning their product website into a money-printing machine.
3. The student who used to work for you…
What I’m really trying to say here is, if your web site has been built and maintained by your sister-in-law’s, cousin’s nephew’s brother’s friend, a co-op student, part-time employees, tinker tailors or non-professionals, you need to talk to us. This situation leads to all sorts of issues. The first comes when the business owner finds out that the co-op student web designer from nine years ago was the one to registered the domain name and now he can’t be found to transfer it to the rightful business owner.
Next we usually run into the “Well the person who did the site before has all the passwords and no one knows what happened to them” story. That’s always fun. Then it can often build up to John and Jane Doe from bookkeeping or administration down the hall ends up taking care of the website as part of their day to day duties. “Perfect” we say, ”You mean they update the content daily to keep your site fresh.” “No, no,” is the usual response. They took a night school course on web design and take care of the whole site. I often ask afterwards if you would trust an auto mechanic or electrician to work on your car or fuse box if you know they only took a couple classes in night school. I would by the way, but it would be for simple things like changing the oil or spark plugs or fixing an outlet. However, to rebuild my engine or wire the house — bring in the professionals. They are the right tool for the right job at the end of the day.
4. If the focus of your site is lost or blurry
This has been a common theme among many websites I visit. It’s the ideology that people coming to your website would rather read about every single thing you sell as a product or service. It’s the ideology that people really want to read about the history of your company and employees rather then hearing it from them directly. It’s the ideology that everything you present on your site should also redirect to every single supplier you use. It is then presented in a fashion that requires someone with twenty years experience in your industry to decipher or interpret. Where do I go? I’m not sure. That is the result.
One of the most important things Lunarstorm preaches about client websites is the need for that website to convert to a phone call. At the end of the day, there is no better sales person for your company than you and your team. If you try to force too much information down your potential client’s throat they will just leave your site and move on to the next site until they have found one that takes them directly to what they are looking for, which is usually contact information. Your website has to be informative and at the same time simple and concise. It has to be like a thirty second TV commercial that says here is what we do and here is how you get in contact with us.
5. If the majority of your menu reads like this: Home, About Us, Services, Products, Contact Us
What’s wrong with that you ask? Nothing at all, if your goal is to lump yourself in with the million other businesses that have the exact same menu. The menu is one of the core pieces of your website that not only tells Google what the hell you do but it is also the main thing your potential client sees when they enter your website. I often tell clients when we are sitting down for the SEO aspect of the web design that when regarding the menu, a complete layman and first time visitor to the site should be able to give a thirty second sales pitch after reading the main menu. This means it is clear and concise and will usually create the need to click further into the website.
The other reason which is equally important to not confusing your potential client is not to confuse Google or the other search engines either. Google treats your main menu the same as your grade 9 English teacher treated the title of the pages on your book report. In short they are like chapter titles and best be informative. To search engines like Google the title of your book report, i.e.; the titles in your menu and ergo the titles of the website pages should tell you exactly what will be found on that page. As an example if you look under the Lunarstorm menu titled web design, what information do you think you will find? I know what Google will be expecting. Now if instead Lunarstorm put the menu title Services up there instead of Web Design, what would I be telling the user or search engines like Google? Not much, not much at all.
