Making your website as effective as possible at helping visitors to find what they want  isn’t difficult, here are some points to consider. If they can find what they want then they are more likely to get in touch with you. Take a look at your website and see how many of our tips you have already implemented and if there are some others you could add to your pages.

Visible contact details
You can make life easier for visitors to your website by including your contact details on every page. This doesn’t take up much space and it makes certain that whatever page they land on (if they have found you via a search engine they may not necessarily land on your homepage) they can call or email you when they see the product or service they are interested in, or if they want to ask you a question. Contact details can be included at the top of each page, perhaps close to your logo to reinforce who they are calling. Also place your details at the bottom of the page in the footer so it doesn’t matter if your page scrolls when customers browse your website.

Place links to any social networking accounts that you control to allow customers to contact you in a way that suits them. Your customers may want to find out more about you than what appears on your website and making it easy for them to follow your day-to-day activities on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can help to build their trust in your brand.

Where are you located?
Having a map and address listed for your office reassures web visitors because it shows them you have a real presence, not just a virtual one. It can also be highly relevant if they want to visit you or make a purchase that would need to be collected or courier dispatched as distance from your office could make or break their decision to buy. Your map could be quite a simple drawing representing local main roads and any significant landmarks or you could choose to use a mapping service like the one Google provides.

Your image
Having photographs of you, your staff and your premises helps people to recognise you, making you more ‘real’, and assists customers to find your premises. The photographs you use should be taken with care. Consider if you can see other company premises or signs, rubbish, dilapidated cars and vans that block the view of your building.  Take the photo on a day with reasonable weather and bear in mind a photo taken in sunshine creates a positive image. When taking photographs of people make sure that they appear professional and well-groomed and try to make sure the lighting used is flattering, natural daylight is often better than fluorescent strip lights. Also, what background will appear behind these people? Try to avoid also photographing plug sockets, untidy office interiors and mountains of unfiled paperwork.

Tips for finding stock photographs online.

When they do decide to make contact
Make sure you have a method for collecting contact requests that come in from your website and put someone in charge of responding. If there is a form on the website when customers part with their contact details in order to ask you a question or to request information they will expect a response in return for disclosing their contact information. The opportunity to make contact with a new customer and to make a good forst impression should not be missed.

Your company newsletter
Concentrate on writing your newsletter with the interests of your customers at the front of your mind if you want them to actually read it and recommend it to others. A newsletter full of sales messages and company news that is only of interest to your staff will not encourage customers to eagerly open the next edition when it arrives. It should also be well written and checked for spelling and grammatical errors before being sent. Don’t neglect to include you logo and contact details with your newsletter so customers can use it as a way to contact you if they want to.

Feedback and testimonials
Genuine testimonials on your website are helpful because they build up a useful picture of your services for other customers. Build up a collection of testimonials so that you can regularly change them on the website, have a process in place and put someone in charge of asking every customer if they would provide feedback.

Blog about your business
Like your newsletter, blog about issues that will interest your customers about your products and services and the hot topics in your industry sector. Show your customers that you are an expert in what you do by writing about it and help to build up customer confidence in your ability. A blog can also help your search engine rankings by providing updated content on a regular basis.

Read our Top 10 Blogging Tips

Review your website
Spend time reviewing the pages on your website and check that there are no unfinished pages or pages that could benefit from expanded information or better images to illustrate your products or services. Your customers may need more information before making a purchase and incomplete information and unfinished pages will not help you to win their business.

If you need help to review your website we offer a website MOT

Like this? Try these:

Top ten tips for your e-commerce website
Forget the technology, it’s all about sales and marketing
The unofficial ‘rules’ that make great web pages visitors want to read

Looking for new web design ideas?

Visit our web design gallery.

Share/Bookmark

It can be hard to know where to begin when you want to get your business onto the internet with your own website. Although most attention is paid to the website itself there are some other basic things you’ll need to consider before you get to the design stage.

Your website address (or ‘URL’)
Your options are almost unlimited here, you could go for the name of your business or think laterally and opt for an address that illustrates what you do:

• for example “jacksonsplumbing .co.uk
• or, fixaleak .co.uk

Companies often buy both types of name just to make sure. Consider too whether you want a .co.uk address or a .com address. The dot com option is a bit more expensive and you may find that the exact name you want is unavailable as they are very popular. Although a dot com address is preferred by some there can be advantages to a .co.uk in that it immediately advertises the fact that your company does business in the UK and that may be helpful to customers finding you via a search engine who don’t already know your company location.

Read our blog post “Tips On Choosing a Website Domain Name”

Website hosting
In order for anyone to visit your site when it is designed and built you will need to pay for a place for the site to be hosted. Simply, this is a large server that stores all your website files and when a visitor taps in your website address the files are uploaded to their website browser from the server. Hosting varies from the free to the expensive, depending on your needs and expected volume of visitors. You may want to opt for a hosting company that promises certain service standards. Typically these standards involve:

• Guaranteeing the server will not spend more than a certain amount of time each month unavailable while it is updated or serviced
• Explaining how much traffic the server can handle
• Giving you a contact method if things go wrong

A website plan
What do you want your website to achieve? Is it informational, explaining to visitors what you do, how you work, where you are and how to get in touch? Or is it designed to sell online, allowing visitors to purchase through the site using e-commerce technology? Is it a marketing and promotion vehicle designed to get visitors interested enough to call, email or sign up to your email newsletter? Perhaps you want a personal blog site that you can write articles for and update yourself. It might combine these options.

It will make your website design and build much simpler if you know what it is you want the website to achieve before you start as the design, text and functions can all be aimed squarely at meeting your needs. (This also makes marketing the website easier when you come to that job.)

Once you know what you want the site to achieve you can also plan the number of pages you think you will need. Most sites have a homepage, ‘About Us’ and ‘Contact Us’ as basic pages. You may also want pages for your services or products and for customer testimonials. Check out other websites to get ideas for the kind of information other companies place on their website and see if you think these pages would also suit your needs.

Text and images
If you don’t have images that can be used on your website to illustrate what you do and who you are then you may want to consider getting a photographer in to take some. Again, bear in mind what you want to website to achieve and see if your images will help with getting the correct message across to your visitors. You also have the option of buying stock photographs from the various sites that exist online. These can be useful for generic images of people, things and places that will help to illustrate what your business does.

Writing the text for your pages can be a hard task when you’re close to the day-to-day running of a business. Your web plan should help you angle your text towards the desired outcome for the website as well as giving you the titles and number of pages you have to write for. Always keep the site visitor in mind when you write the text and try to keep the content so it will be of interest to them.

You can always hire a copywriter to craft the text for your pages. A good copywriter will want to hear all about your business and your aims for the website in order to write their text so it meets your aims.

Create Design Studio offer a free consultation, call David Woodroofe to talk about your website plans on 01962 737989 today.

Like this? Try these:

Sell via your website, even in a recession
Helpful tips for planning your e-commerce website

Share/Bookmark