How effective is your small business website? by Cliff Koraska

One of our readers recently asked me what was the most important consideration of their business website. I didn't hesitate to respond "who you are trying to attract, what is the purpose of the site, where can I find it, and why should I come back to your business website." There are many talented graphic designers that have coined themselves "website designers," designing beautiful websites that are completely missing the real purposes of a business website: to sell and communicate. Your company's website can be a powerful marketing tool to attract new customers, keep existing customers, inform and educate customers about new products or services, and persuade them to employ your company versus your competitor.

Who are you trying to attract with your small business website?

Before you write the first sentence of your business website, consider your customer base and the future prospects you would like to interest. Perform a simple survey of your current customers and ask them what information is most relevant to them. Keep in mind that your customer may have more than the buyer seeking information. For instance, if you supply widgets, your customer's engineering department may need technical drawings. Make it easy for that engineer to download or order the technical drawings from your website. In another instance, if you supply product brochures to your customer, make it easy for them to order brochures from your business website with an order form. Future prospects who find your website want to see how easy it is to do business with you. Building a website that matches your customer needs should in turn match your future prospects needs.

What is the purpose of your small business website?

So often overlooked, your business website should inform, educate, and persuade. Remember, your primary goal for your website is to sell your goods or services. Mr. Buyer at XYZ Corp. wants to see a benefit by visiting your business website. The visitor to your website demands the information required to make an informed buying decision. Surprise the website visitor by giving them information they did not expect. For, instance, providing a link to an interesting industry article highlighting your product provides a "soft" testimonial. Does your website offer stock status or availability for your products?

Your business website's copy should demonstrate a persuasive selling message, be easy to read and navigate. Mr. Buyer at XYZ Corp. wants to purchase something. After Mr. Buyer reads (or most likely scans) the information they are seeking, is it easy for them to link to additional information or get back to your "home" page? Include links to additional information at the end of copy, but use a keyword in the anchor text like "Small Business Consulting Home Page." And always include a link back to your "home" page so the reader never gets lost on your website. As for ease of reading, write in "chunks." Use three or four sentence paragraphs and short sentences with plenty of white space. Your web page will then be friendly to the eyes and can be quickly scanned for information.

Where can I find your small business website?

For existing customers, often the answer to this question is to rattle off the domain name, for instance www.mysite.com. But most of your potential customers that you may not even be aware of will search the internet through a search engine to find your product or service. Popular search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Alta Vista and the like are used daily by millions of people. Is your website listed in the top ten search engines, with an acceptable page rank? Page rank in the internet world is the position of your website relative to other websites when searched for a particular keyword or phrase on a search engine. A well designed website should be optimized for the search engines.

Keywords and meta tags in your small business website.

Again, before you write your first sentence for your business website, consider the use of keywords, especially in the title and description of your website. Keywords are words or phrases that are used in your business, and are placed in tags and meta tags in the HTML code (hypertext markup language - the language of the internet). Tags and meta tags are descriptors used in HTML. If you want to submit your website to the most popular search engines, the tag title and meta tags keywords and description are an important part of your website structure to allow for search engine optimization. The reason for this is simple: search engines look and index your website starting from the top of a page to the bottom. In HTML, the tags and meta tags are at the top of the page. Each keyword you choose should be located in your HTML title and description, and used in your web page content as many times as possible without sounding redundant to support the use of the keywords. This is known as keyword density. The higher the number of uses of a keyword or phrase versus other words used on the page, the better the support of the keywords as viewed by the indexing nature of the search engines. For instance, the number of times the word keyword (including plurals) used in this paragraph is ten.

Why should I come back to your small business website?

Content is king on the internet. Content includes the information your customer wants to see. In addition, content includes articles, press releases, industry information, and other related information that supports the goal of your website: to sell and communicate. To accomplish this goal, here's a checklist:

Your website should must offer your visitors a reason to stay. Remember how easy it is for your visitor to hit the back key!

• Offer a reason to come back to your website. Update content regularly to keep it fresh.
• Promote your website. Use meta tags, the title and description tags effectively.
• Include easy navigation from one page to the next.
• Your web pages should load quickly.
• Graphics are pretty, but generally are large files. Keep it simple.
• Review your website statistics. What search engines are your customers using and what keywords are they using to find your website?

By making your business website easy to read and navigate while matching information to your customers' needs, your website will be on it's way to becoming a valuable tool for your business. Remember, your website should inform, educate, and persuade and provide relevant information your customer can use to help them make a purchasing decision.

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