3
Simple Ways To Dramatically Improve Your Website
by: Mike Cheney
Before you start worrying about marketing your website
on the internet it always pays dividends to look at
the website itself and get the fundamentals right
before looking to shout about it from the virtual
mountain-tops.
You may already have thought about the following 3
ways and some of you may already have them in place
on your website. If so – congratulations –
you’re well on the way to having a website that
will bring you more business. So here they are then
– the 3 Simple Ways To Dramatically Improve
Your Website..
1. You’re Fishing For Visitors – You’ll
Need This To Hook Them.
Ever been surfing on a website that held your attention
and then the phone rings? You take the call, take
some notes, get distracted, visit another website
and before you know it you’ve forgotten all
about the website you were viewing. It happens all
the time and if you don’t have a Bookmarking
tool on your website it will be happening with the
people that come to your website. A Bookmarking tool
is just a simple link or logo that your visitors can
click on in order to bookmark your website or add
it to their favourites. It is best to have the button
located on the homepage but an even better option
is to have a bookmarking button on every page so a
visitor can actually bookmark each specific page of
your website for safe-keeping. Look to the left of
this article and you will see the bookmarking button
we use – click on it to see how it adds this
specific page to your favourites – nifty eh?
2. ‘X’ Marks The Spot.
Visitors come to your website and if you’re
lucky – they like it and click beyond the homepage.
Excellent. But they can’t find what they’re
looking for. Uh oh, you could be in trouble. There’s
a lot of information on your website and Mr. Visitor
doesn’t have time to sift through it all to
find what he’s looking for. You’d better
hope that he’s either very patient or that you’ve
provided him with a simple map to help him get to
the ‘treasure’ he is looking for. A Site
Map is an essential item – particularly on larger
websites.
There is nothing more frustrating than hunting around
for something and wasting time when just a simple
one pager that presents a summary of all the information
on your website could be used. A Site Map should be
reachable from all pages of your website in just one
click and should have clickable links on it so that
a visitor can zoom straight through to their desired
location without having to hunt around. If you don’t
give them a map your visitors may become frustrated
searching around for that desired piece of information
and they may leave your website never to return.
3.
Don’t Make Your Visitors Have To Write An Email
To Contact You
If you are inviting enquiries or contact from visitors
to your website you need to provide them with a way
of doing this that is as easy as possible for them.
Just posting your email address on the website is
not the best solution. Why? Because when they click
on it they need to then create an email from scratch.
Do you know how busy your visitors are? They hardly
have time to read the content of your homepage –
never mind create an email from scratch. The solution?
You need to use a simple form. A form enables you
to standardise the responses that you receive and
it also makes it very simple for your visitors to
get in touch with you – all they need to do
is pop in their name, email address and tick a few
boxes and that’s it.
Making it easy for your visitors to contact you isn’t
the only reason that using a form is a great idea.
Doing so means you can get some information back from
each person that fills in the form. You can ask them
how they discovered your website, which other websites
they like to visit – you can ask them anything!
Anything that is going to help you learn more about
them, more about who they are and more about what
will make them buy from you. You think they would
tell you all this if they were creating an email from
scratch? No – of course they wouldn’t!
That’s why you need a form.
Mike Cheney, www.magnet4web.com (c)
About The Author
Are You Getting Your MagnetMail? - Mike Cheney's World-Famous
Free Magic Mail To Make Your Website Magnetic, Get
Yours Now: www.magnet4web.com/website_services/?page=magnetmail
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