If you leave your website's look and feel strictly to the designers, be prepared to get a beautiful, sexy, artistic site that does everything but make you money. Why? Because they know website design, but they do not know your business. The five tips below will help ensure that you not only have a website that looks professional, but a website that's open and ready for business!
#1 - Keep your important information above the fold. 64.9% of people don't scroll. And 77.3% of statistics are made up on the spot. So forget the statistics, just remember that your phone number, physical address, "Buy Now" button all have a greater chance of being clicked on if you don't require people to scroll down to click on them. Make sure all of your important information is eye level and consistent on every page throughout your site.
#2 - Include an Opt-in Form on your Website. You are getting these five tips because you offered me your email address. We have just created an eRelationship and now I can continue to communicate with you from time to time over email. When creating an Opt-in form for your Website, offer something of real value so people feel good about giving you their name and email address. Remind them that you will only email a periodic eNewsletter and that you will NEVER sell or give their email address to anyone else.
#3 - Link Clarity - Another rule of thumb: if the user doesn't feel confident they know where the link they are about to click on is taking them, they won't click on it. So take the guess work out of it and make your links abundantly clear. Contact Us. Yep, that's pretty clear.
#4 - Color Pollution - Remember when your mom thought anything you brought home from art class was the most beautiful masterpiece in the world? Well, no offense, but I'm willing to bet it fell into the category of color pollution. Color pollution is simply more than three primary colors on a page. Any more than three and your brain slowly begins to turn to mush. This is crucial when it comes to your website because you want your user's attention to stay focused on the content, not that odd shade of mauve.
#5 - Include Key Words in your homepage content - this is not your web designer's job, so you can't blame them for not doing it. Again, they don't know your business and wouldn't have the slightest clue what words would make the most sense to include on your homepage. Key Words are those words your users will type in search engines to find you…or your competitors. You want any word or phrase that they might type in to be scattered throughout your homepage as the search engines will give you credit for those words and that will increase your likelihood of a higher search engine ranking.
Corey Perlman teaches a course entitled, the eBoot Camp, where he covers the ABCs of building a successful business online. He's also recently written a book entitled Find Your e! -- Internet Marketing for the Small Business Owner. For more information, visit www.findyoure.com.
Corey’s been a student of Internet Marketing for over ten years. He has a Master’s Degree in Marketing from Florida State University and spent three years working with the eCommerce division of General Motors. During his tenure with GM, he participated in a 37 city tour; teaching over 3000 dealership personnel how to do business through the power of the internet. Corey spent the last five years helping to develop an internet startup company that was acquired by Wilson Partners, Inc. in 2006.
Recently, Corey has conducted numerous Internet marketing seminars to public audiences as well as small and mid size companies. These “eBoot Camps” have earned an exceeded expectations rating of over 90%. Corey knew a book could travel further and faster than he could, so he recently inked a book entitled, eBoot Camp! His mission is to help Small Business Owners, from the Dry Cleaner, to the Accountant, the Pizza Store Owner to the Plumber, compete in this ever-evolving digital world
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