There is no more critical tool in the 21st Century that an effective website. But too many people are making poor design decisions too often. Lets try to help here. I will create a draft list for evaluating websites. If you have any questions or complaints or want to contradiction- leave a comment of send some email.
There are all degrees of stinkypoo and no website is perfect. This list is not authoritative. In fact, if you feel something is missing, speak up.
Let get some simple design flaws out of the way quickly.
a. Make sure your print is big enough for older eyes. Older eyes have most of the money, so be nice and make the print bigger. Oh, and most older people don’t realize you can increase the size of the font, and most wouldn’t do it if they did. If you can’t make the print big enough for them, someone else with more consideration- will.
b. Dancing images make Flash Designers do high 5s and go find a cool one to celebrate when the coding is all done. What a masterpiece! Dancing images just tick everybody else off.
If we want dancing images we can watch Dancing with the Stars. Your dancing images distract and annoy and a good share of people go find some place that uses Flash effectively. Maybe demonstrate a point. Maybe explain a process.
When flash adds value, we like it. When flash adds flair, we flare up.
c. Is your site too busy? Does it have too many great offers? Just fascinating and funny images all over the place? Well nobody is willing to sift through BS to find what they want. And most of what you think people want probably misses the mark.
Ask people to tell you what they think. Make sure you get back real feedback and not what you want to hear.
More expensive sites are often worse. You know you pay more money, I guess there better be more going on. Oh, dear. This is not true. People come looking for help. They are making choices fast. You want them to decipher your page. They won’t. They don’t.
d. There is certainly important stuff missing here. What annoys you with many websites? I guess I didn’t mention clicking and beeping Flash- ick!. I didn’t mention websites with entry pages- pure tyranny by graphic designers. I didn’t mention the conditional calls in many website URLs which interfere with SEO… So feel free to rant about some website that annoys you. You can even rant about this one. Some nerd did this one.
1. Do you have a marketing and sales strategy for your site?
- Do you have any strategic idea what are you trying to do?
- Do you have strategic business objectives that you pursuing?
- Do you know who you want to talk to?
Do you know who you are talking to or do you think the whole world is your client? The whole world is not a potential client. To think so dilutes your message and wastes your energy. Do you realize that 20% of your clients are providing 80% of your business- 80% of your profits? What are you doing to to leverage this knowledge?
Business objectives are so critical. Do not be be fenced in by conventional wisdom. Some unique thought here can make something special.
Are you building in a variety of nurturing processes?
- Have you developed a step-by-step process for compelling people to move from a visit to a conversation? to connecting with you?
- Do you have a specific plan for moving people along until they become a client?
- How are you using your website to help nurture and keep lifetime clients?
2. This subject segues right into having effective content. Effective content is determined by the reaction of your web visitors to it. When you know who you want to reach, they you have a pretty good idea what they are looking for.
- Is your content out of date? Have you looked lately?
- Is your content a collection of platitudes?
- Is there anything on your site that distinguishes you from your competition?
Do you wax eloquent about how conscientious your people are, how you care for customers. People go blind around self congratulatory content. What else are you going to say– ” We try hard but we are mediocre with customer service at times” Never– nobody is going to say anything like that and so they don’t care what you say about yourself– they don’t respond to it. They don’t believe it.
In generally goes in one eye and out the other. If they do notice it, they find it annoying. They leave your site.
2 a. Effective content requires you to listen well to your customers– to listen well to your prospects. Do you ever talk to the people who don’t hire you and find out why? How does this relate to your website… When you discover misunderstandings or misconceptions about your business that cost you sales, you can then find solutions to alleviate the problem. The website is a powerful tool for doing just that. All it requires is useful content to clarify the issues.
You can also listen how they address issues– how they talk about issues that are critical to them. Do they use a different language that you?
Understanding what is important to prospects and customers is essential for an effective website. So many websites wonder off with website owners make up what they think is important. It is not what you think that is important. To think otherwise costs you money. Compelling content is essential in the 21st century.
4. Listening well segues write into web metrics measurement and testing. We all make up what we feel people want to know about our business. But to really improve your content offerings and critical elements of your website, you need to test and optimize the site and content according to the results of testing.
Are you testing? Are you using web analytics to better understand what works and what does not work as well on your site?
5. Do you know your best keywords and do you use them effectively? Do you understand the term keywords? Do you know the rudiments of SEO search- that is Search Engine Optimization? This is not a complex topic but there are essential fundamentals you need to know.
Do you know your keywords and themes that relate to the benefits your service provides. ( This assumes that you know the critical difference between features and benefits)
6. Are you tracking conversions on your site? This is basically direct response marketing. Are you making compelling offers for which you can test for response? When someone responds you know that they have an interest in a particular service or product you offer. Are you well versed in analytics technologies. Do you use systems like Webmaster tools from Google to stay tuned in with technology changes and with utilizing the available technologies to understand what is happening and what is working best on your site?
7. Does your website foster a connection to your visitor? Are you inviting a conversation or are you just spewing facts. Understanding what your prospect is concerned about is critical to matching your content to what the web visitor is looking for. The better you match their concerns, the better you are able to create rapport, the better your chances of a conversion.
8. Do you understand the sales process? People figure out they might need help with something? They first have to to convince themselves that they want something different and then they start to figure out what they want and who they are going to trust to give them different.
So how well does your website match people’s thinking processes as they traverse figuring out what they want to figuring out into thinking about who they are going to hire to give it to them.
9. Does your site have personality? Do you celebrate and recognize your key people or are you one of those sites that hides behind a corporate face and does not get any more personal than email to info@. This is costing you money. People like to know who they are going to do business with. I don’t know why companies and websites do this, but it is costing them money.
10. DoyYou have an compelling reasons why anyone visiting your site should contact you? This is tricky. This returns to the theme of what web visitors care about. Do you know what FUD is? Fear Uncertainty and Doubt.
Your web visitor comes looking for help. If you don’t give them a sense of what can impact them, what they need to watch out for, what they need to be concerned about, your not watching out for your prospect and you are not making an impact.
11. Don’t make stuff up here. Dishonesty will be outed- sooner or later. Don’t create fake badges. Don’t sneak BBB images onto your site unless the actually work. Watch the hyperbole.
I ran across a certain brick repair company a couple weeks ago that drew a picture of critters crawling through cracks in the wall that better befits a horror movie. If you have a crack in your wall you might want to start looking for a velociraptor under the bed.
When you overstate– when you hyperventilate– people see through that and don’t trust you.
12. Watch Out for the wrong technology in web design. If you already have some of these problems, you might want to investigate how it is impacting you. Details on Technology defects are here.
13. So what is missing? A whole lot of the BS about design and colors is missing… huh? Well I am a nerd. Simple works. People come looking for answers not entertainment.
14. Make sure the site works. Make sure people can find what you do quickly. Concentrate on offering value quickly. The first few seconds are critical.
Your analytics program can help you with bounce rates and help you find problems with people becoming frustrated and leaving. No website is perfect but all can be in a state of trying to attain perfect.
Where do you feel this website is on the road to perfection? 
Feel free to tell me what you think. What is missing here? What would you add?
Leave a comment. Or feel free to call or email me.
