Does Your Website Work?
It wasn't too long ago that every new lead I had thought that just having a website was enough to make a lot of money. Unfortunately many of these people found out the hard way that this is not true. They didn't get the traffic they expected and they didn't get any leads. It surprised how many people didn't want to spend any money on Adsense and Search Engine Optimization to get more hits and more sales.
Today it is very important to have a plan for after your website goes live. This plan needs to incorporate three things as a bare minimum:
1. Analytics
Analytics will help you understand how many people are visiting your website and what they do when they get there. It is essential for business success that you know if your website works. Knowing how people find you is also going to help you understand if your low conversion to sales is from traffic that is not specific to your service or from poor copy or website design.
2. Search Engine Optimization
Getting directed traffic from people searching for your product or services is the key to success on the internet. Search Engine Optimization is a time consuming service that increases the rank of your website for search requests on Google, Yahoo or MSN live. Of these three, Google is the most important. If you can be in the top 3 results, or on the first page for keyword searches associated with your business and website, then you are on the right track to getting the right type of traffic.
3. Website Maintenance
So lets say you have points 1 and 2 covered, but you find that you still aren't getting the contacts or sales from your site. This is where maintenance starts.
Adjusting copy, page design and functionality all help to get greater conversions. Tweaking your site is what is required. Running small experiments is also required to make sure you get the traffic on your website converted to leads, newsletter subscriptions or sales. It can also enhance your search engine ranking and enhance repeat sales and returning customer perception of your site.
Obviously there is more that can be done to grow your business, but for gaining new contacts and prospects for your business there is no better way than by having a highly attuned website that can constantly be gaining more traffic and more conversion to sale percentage from every visitor.