Colorado Springs Website design and marketing

Too many small businesses have web sites that haven’t been touched since the initial design was finished. If your web site doesn’t need a total redesign yet, you should still be making periodic updates and improvements to it so it can continue to help you support your business goals.

These top 10 web site fixes will be much less expensive than a total redesign, and they will also contribute to your bottom line by:

• Making your site look better
• Help your site be found higher on search engine results
• Get your visitors to contact you or buy your product or service.

Here they are: Top 10 Quick Fixes for Your Web Site:

1. Make your web site load faster.
   If your web site takes too long to load, they will quickly leave and find another site that won’t waste their valuable time. Your total web site load time should not be more than 100-150 KB. This includes load time of images, multimedia (flash), JavaScript, stylesheets, and text. Here is a useful free tool that tells you how long your web site takes to load.
2. Display your logo and contact info at the top of every page.
   Visitors are used to seeing the company logo on the top left of the page – so put your logo there too. Also make it easy for visitors to contact you by putting your phone number, address, and/or call-to-action buttons on the top middle or top right of every page.
3. Create effective call-to-action buttons.
   Wherever you talk about your product or service, display an effective link or button telling your visitors how to buy your product or service. Linked images or buttons are more effective than text links. Include action verbs in your buttons, and make sure all your call-to-action buttons look consistent.
4. Shorten your contact forms.
   Better yet, put a mini-contact form on your home page or on the top or side of every page so visitors don’t have to waste time clicking on your “Contact Us” link to contact you. Keep the list of items they have to fill out short. Name, email, and one other field (comments or a dropdown menu) should be enough.
5. Write unique page titles for every page.
   A page title is the top-most text you see in your browser’s window when viewing a web page. It is also the first text that a search engine sees and often displays in the search engine results. Make sure each page has a different title and the text in the title matches the content of the page. Include your top keywords in the title and make sure the title is at least less than 8-10 words.
6. Review your web site copy.
   Make sure your copy is in text format – search engines can’t see text that is embedded in an image. You should have at least 250 words of text on each web page so search engines will give them credibility. Break up your text so visitors and search engines can scan it quickly: use headlines, bullets, and images to do this. Try to include your top keywords in headlines, sub-headlines, bullet items, and links in your web site’s copy.
7. Check your web site for errors.
   Make sure your site has no spelling errors, broken links, or invalid code. Both web site visitors and search engines give less credibility to sites that have errors. Go to the W3C web site to see if your site has broken links or code errors.
8. Check out your competitors’ web sites.
   Make a list of your top competitors, visit their web sites, and write down any good ideas they have for quality web site content that will make your visitors want to do business with you. Then brainstorm for some unique content ideas of your own.
9. Create a sitemap page.
   A sitemap is an outline, consisting of links, of your entire web site. Put the link to your sitemap page on your home page and every page in your site – the footer (bottom of the page) is a good place for this link. Some visitors also use this as a tool for navigating a web site.
10. Look at your web site statistics.
    Your web site statistics will show you valuable information about who is coming to your web site, how they got there, and what they do there. Read my previous article, Basics of Web Site Statistics to learn how to get your statistics setup and how to use that valuable information once you have it at your fingertips.

Tags: Web Site Conversion, web site redesign, web site search engine optimization, web site tips, web site updates, Web Site Usability

This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Search Engine Optimization, Web Site Analytics (Statistics), Web Site Conversion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.