Six Ways to Improve Your Web Site
Here are six sometimes-overlooked ways to improve your Web site. Your Webmaster can include these items in your site to encourage your customers to decide to buy your goods or services and help the search engines place you well in their standings.
1. Use Headlines
Your headlines should say exactly what you are selling and give good reasons for buying your product.
Your page copy should reinforce the benefit of owning the product by stating clearly what your product will do for the customer as well as the product features, the facts of size, weight, operational statistics, and the price. Always remember, people do not buy products - they buy the benefits of owning them.
Make sure your selling copy contains customer-focused text. When you re-read your page content, see how often you use the term "we, us, or our" rather than "You". Focus on the customer and not YOU. If your text contains only "We offer…," or "Our service includes…," then it is focusing on you rather than the customer.
2. Use Proper Tags
HTML, the Web site authoring language, has heading tags, bold tags, italic tags, and ordered and unordered lists (commands that specify how text should appear) for a reason and you should use them. Using a heading tag for your headlines and bold tags for important text will help allow search engines to understand what text on a page is more important than the surrounding text. Simply making text larger or using pictures of words does not do that.
3. Create a Unique 404-error Page
A 404-error page is the page you see when someone clicks on a broken link or a renamed page. The standard page simply tells you the page is no longer available. It has no other links, no branding and above all, very little helpful information. It contains daunting text like “The page cannot be found. The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.”
Your unique 404-error page should look like a regular page of your site and include your site's header, footer and navigation bars so that the visitor can easily go to another section of your site. This unique 404-error page should contain friendly text explaining that the page selected is no longer available along with contact information so the site visitor can e-mail or call your company.
4. Privacy Statement
Clearly and simply stating your privacy policy assures a site visitor that you will not sell, give or trade their email or personal information to a third party. Including this statement can be of tremendous benefit to your e-mail or form-submission returns. Use a sentence like “We value your privacy” next to e-mail links or forms on your site and on your contact page. Be sure to have, at the minimum, the word "privacy" linked to your privacy statement. Using a simple sentence with a link to the privacy policy gives the site visitor assurance that you care about their privacy without their having to read the long explanation.
5. E-mail Signatures
Create standard e-mail signatures for yourself and your employees. Anyone that uses the Internet in your company should have a company standard e-mail signature. Having the company's contact and Web site information on every e-mail makes it easy for the recipient to contact you or visit your site. Creating a standard e-mail signature improves your overall branding strategy. You can include the e-mail creator's name, phone number, fax number, company name, logo, Web site address, and any other pertinent information. You can also change the e-mail signature on your smart phone to include these items.
6. Call to Action
A call to action is a statement that asks the site visitor to do something. Two of the biggest mistakes made on a Web site are not using calls to action or using the wrong ones. You have probably been on sites that have text and links but nothing that tells you what to do next. Look over your site and see what calls to action are on your site. Try to view it as a first time visitor would and create a pathway of actions that you want your site visitor to take.
The most common call to action is "Click Here,” but consider using other statements using words like learn, save, read, compare, buy, etc.
Calls to action are usually linked to another page on your site. If possible, use a keyword in the link to help with search engine optimization.
1. Use Headlines
Your headlines should say exactly what you are selling and give good reasons for buying your product.
Your page copy should reinforce the benefit of owning the product by stating clearly what your product will do for the customer as well as the product features, the facts of size, weight, operational statistics, and the price. Always remember, people do not buy products - they buy the benefits of owning them.
Make sure your selling copy contains customer-focused text. When you re-read your page content, see how often you use the term "we, us, or our" rather than "You". Focus on the customer and not YOU. If your text contains only "We offer…," or "Our service includes…," then it is focusing on you rather than the customer.
2. Use Proper Tags
HTML, the Web site authoring language, has heading tags, bold tags, italic tags, and ordered and unordered lists (commands that specify how text should appear) for a reason and you should use them. Using a heading tag for your headlines and bold tags for important text will help allow search engines to understand what text on a page is more important than the surrounding text. Simply making text larger or using pictures of words does not do that.
3. Create a Unique 404-error Page
A 404-error page is the page you see when someone clicks on a broken link or a renamed page. The standard page simply tells you the page is no longer available. It has no other links, no branding and above all, very little helpful information. It contains daunting text like “The page cannot be found. The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.”
Your unique 404-error page should look like a regular page of your site and include your site's header, footer and navigation bars so that the visitor can easily go to another section of your site. This unique 404-error page should contain friendly text explaining that the page selected is no longer available along with contact information so the site visitor can e-mail or call your company.
4. Privacy Statement
Clearly and simply stating your privacy policy assures a site visitor that you will not sell, give or trade their email or personal information to a third party. Including this statement can be of tremendous benefit to your e-mail or form-submission returns. Use a sentence like “We value your privacy” next to e-mail links or forms on your site and on your contact page. Be sure to have, at the minimum, the word "privacy" linked to your privacy statement. Using a simple sentence with a link to the privacy policy gives the site visitor assurance that you care about their privacy without their having to read the long explanation.
5. E-mail Signatures
Create standard e-mail signatures for yourself and your employees. Anyone that uses the Internet in your company should have a company standard e-mail signature. Having the company's contact and Web site information on every e-mail makes it easy for the recipient to contact you or visit your site. Creating a standard e-mail signature improves your overall branding strategy. You can include the e-mail creator's name, phone number, fax number, company name, logo, Web site address, and any other pertinent information. You can also change the e-mail signature on your smart phone to include these items.
6. Call to Action
A call to action is a statement that asks the site visitor to do something. Two of the biggest mistakes made on a Web site are not using calls to action or using the wrong ones. You have probably been on sites that have text and links but nothing that tells you what to do next. Look over your site and see what calls to action are on your site. Try to view it as a first time visitor would and create a pathway of actions that you want your site visitor to take.
The most common call to action is "Click Here,” but consider using other statements using words like learn, save, read, compare, buy, etc.
Calls to action are usually linked to another page on your site. If possible, use a keyword in the link to help with search engine optimization.