Thursday, March 30, 2006

Building a Professional Website that Achieves Your Goals

Building a Professional Website that Achieves Your Goals
by Stoney G deGeyter

Your website is an electronic extension of your business. Poorly designed web pages often fail to provide users with a satisfactory online browsing or shopping experience. By nature of being an electronic medium, web surfers have constantly growing expectations from the sites they visit while online. The web page equivalent of local kid’s $5 car wash flier, or a poorly produced cable show or infomercial is no longer effective when it comes to convincing shoppers that you take your business—or them—seriously. The appearance of your business website lends directly to your credibility. If you can establish credibility then sales will likely follow.

Meet Industry Expectations
A “professional” look can vary from industry to industry. For one industry you might need a site that screams “corporation,” while another industry might perform best with a mom and pop feel, still another might need a fun or artsy look. Building your site to meet industry expectations simply means knowing your audience and what they expect. Be careful that you don’t confuse any of the above with shoddy design. Whatever “feel” you give your site, make sure it comes out looking great.

Start by researching your competitors and taking an in-depth look at their websites. If all your competitors are going for a particular feel then maybe there’s something to that. Be sure to do your own research so you aren’t solely relying on what your competitors are doing. Often times you’ll find that your competitors are doing the wrong thing entirely.

Overall, make sure you are doing what’s right for your audience. In your design you don’t just want to match your competitors, you should seek to exceed them. Have your site designed to look and perform better, while still providing the overall tone your target audience is looking for.

Incorporate Usability Elements
As you put together your design elements, think: usability. There is nothing more frustrating to a visitor than trying to navigate through a website that is poorly constructed and does not provide obvious, user friendly markers directing them to the information they came looking for.

Intuitive Linking
Use textual links within the body content as part of your navigation scheme. Your website is not a brochure where people flip from one page to another; it is an active document that should allow visitors to navigate as they read, following links to wherever interest strikes them. Contextual linking in the body content provides that avenue without forcing the visitor to rely on the main site navigation to decide what to do next.

It’s the difference between asking your spouse what movie they want to see or asking if they would like to watch a comedy, sci-fi, action, drama or chick flick. With the first, you’re forcing her to do all the thinking and decision making for herself. With the other you are simply presenting options, allowing her to make a decision based on what she desires. That is how you want your visitors to feel. You want them to go where they want, but at the same time be leasing them, through various routs, to the point of action (i.e. sale, conversion, sign-up, etc.)

Emotive Colors
Colors fuel emotions so be sure the colors you use for your website bring out the emotions that best reach your audience. Integrating color elements effectively can create a more inviting website that can easily lead your visitors to take the desired actions.

Calls to Action
You’ve heard the saying, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” On the web, many people try to get the horse to drink without even leading him to water. When visitors come to your site they need to be lead to their desired destination. Use visual calls to action throughout your site that will direct your visitors to click, buy, purchase, read, get, view, order, continue, apply, enter, or whatever else you want them to do.

Careful and strategic planning before you begin developing (or re-developing) your website can help you build the best possible website that meets both your, and your customer’s needs. Consideration and implementation of the above mentioned elements will ensure that your website is effective at pulling traffic and converting your visitors into buyers. Throw in some quality customer service and you’ve got something for your customers to tell others about, which is the most effective kind of marketing there is.


About This Author:
Stoney deGeyter is president of Pole Position Marketing, a
professional search engine marketing firm providing search engine optimization (SEO) and website marketing services since 1998. Stoney is also a part-time instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College, as well as a moderator in the Small Business Ideas Forum. He also contributes daily to the (EMP) E-Marketing Performance search marketing blog as well as the author of his E-Marketing Performance eBook.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

And we have a Winner! Thanks WorldWIT!

I never win anything. Ok, there was the time in college when I won a gift basket from 9News for filling out a survey on the new StarTrek exhibit at the museum. (no, I'm not too embarrased to have been a Trekkie in my former life!) But other than that... My sister has always been the lucky one for things like that. We used to exchange scratch lottery tickets at Christmas. The 10 tickets I bought her invariably ended up netting her $30 or more. The 10 tickets I received netted... $3. And if I had bought 10 tickets for myself, I'd have the same result. Just last year, my big sister won a fabulous trip through her work to the Caribbean. I just don't have that kind of luck.

But this week was different. I won where it counts - exposure to my business. A few months ago, I joined yet another online networking group - WorldWIT (Women, Insights, Technology). I'd known some other VAs who were involved and had success with the group, so I decided to give it a try. Shortly after joining, I placed their logo and link on the home page of my website alongside several others. I had forgotten about it entirely. Until I received a phone call last week from the National office for WorldWIT. They'd had a contest running and out of all the members nationwide who linked to them, I won their contest! Woo-hoo! I never win!

They had several prizes to choose from, and frankly, I would have been happy with either the iPod Shuffle or the free marketing exposure through the WorldWIT newsletter. But I chose to take the free registration for Camp WorldWIT, their national conference coming up in May. I love conferences and know how much they can help with networking and promoting my business, in addition to giving me a big boost of energy to work on my business when I get home.

It's not quite to the level of winning the lottery (I'd have to buy a ticket to get that, anyway!), but it's certainly more beneficial to my business. Thank you, WorldWIT (and my local group, RockyWIT!), for supporting women in business. I look forward to meeting you all at the conference in May!

See What Your Website Visitors Are Doing With Crazy Egg

Here's a new way to see what your website visitors are doing on your site: visually see where their mouse moves to and how long it stays there. Intriguing!

TechCrunch - See What Your Website Visitors Are Doing With Crazy Egg

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

New Online Classes by Creative Assistants

I'm excited to announce that Creative Assistants has partnered with The Entrepreneur's Toolbox to provide on-going online classes related to software & technology productivity! Other collaborators have already started their classes on topics that will "help new and established entrepreneurs build their business success".

We will be holding our first class on Thursday, March 23 at Noon MST - the topic is "Advanced Microsoft Office".

On Tuesday, March 28 at Noon MST, the topic will be "Technology for the Virtual Office".

Be sure to check out these and many more fabulous offerings! And if you're a member of IVAA, you'll get a discount from this preferred partner!

And let us know if you have topics you'd like to see on the calendar!

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Could you get fired for blogging?

Here's another twist in the free speech debate: bloggers posting anonymously (on personal time) get fired for their comments. CNet.com - Bloggers: Use caution

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Wireless networking baffling you?

Trying to network your home computers? Can't figure it out? Baffled? The good news (if there is any) is that you're not alone.

One of my clients is a local ISP and I work with his customers every day troubleshooting networking issues. Therefore, this article came as no surprise to me: "Wireless networking baffles some customers". Even in my own home, I can't get the wireless feature of my (aging) router to work with my brand new computer. It's an industry-wide problem that needs some serious consideration. How can they make it easier for the average consumer to use this technology? And when will they improve the hardware so the failure rates are significantly lower?

From my experience, the easiest wireless router to set up is Linksys. But even that is no guarentee everything will go smoothly. My recommendation: Try setting it up first on your own. Then call the free product support number for help. Then call a professional, we can help.