The approaching spring season always brings about the traditional spring cleaning, and now is the perfect time to take a look at what you can improve upon in your personal and professional life. As you set personal goals, such as losing weight, and professional goals, such as increasing sales, you should also take a look at how you can improve upon an essential aspect of your business’ image: your website.
Your website is a selling point to your potential clients or customers even before they walk through your doors. If you maintain a professional and up-to-date website, then your customers will view your business as professional and up-to-date. However, if your website still uses concepts born and bred in the 1990′s, then clients may look elsewhere for a business that keeps up with the times.
Rejuvenating your website is not a monumental task, but you should be sure to have members from all areas of your organization review your site as you are making updates. For example, your sales department should review the prices and packages that you are selling, since they are the experts in this area. Your designers should review the placement of your navigation and search box to assure that they are easily accessible. Keeping your team in mind, here are thirteen quick ways to make your website more customer-friendly and bring it back to life.
- Update copyright dates. We’ve changed our calendars again, so you should update the copyright year on your website to match the current year. After all, you do not want to drive customers to your site when the copyright date hasn’t been updated since 2005. This leads to the impression that you are not updating your site, which could be a deal breaker to some customers. If you want to retain the year that your website was launched, be sure to include a date span (such as © 2005 – 2010). Ask your developer if he/she can implement an auto-update feature so that the year will automatically change when the year changes. For instance, implementation of the following PHP script will assure that your copyright year is always current:
<?php echo date("Y"); ?> - Check your links. One of the most frustrating website issues is encountering broken links. Just when your client believes she has found the information she has been looking for, she is directed to a “404 Not Found” page. If this happens to your customer, chances are she will move onto a more reliable website. Review all links to assure that all are linking to the correct pages. Check your main navigation links first, since they are the bread and butter of your site. Next, double-check your secondary navigation links, and follow-up by checking links within your content. Pay special attention to links to external websites, as these are often the first links to break, as content is constantly changing throughout the World Wide Web. A great way to check your website links is to use Google Webmaster Tools. Webmaster Tools is a free service that instantly reports “crawl errors,” including broken links from within your sitemap, broken links to your site from referring sites, and links within your content that lead nowhere. In these cases, your developer should be able to set up an “.htaccess” file, which redirects broken links to the correct links, or to a more informative error page.
- Update and correct your content. Spelling and grammatical errors are a quick way to give an unprofessional impression. You should always take the time to proofread content before it is published, but you should also be sure to review your content months after it has been published as well. Errors that are not obvious at the time of writing are usually more obvious after you’ve taken some time away from the content. In addition to double-checking your spelling, you should also review important text to be sure it is up to date. Has your pricing, mission statement, or privacy policy changed? Do you offer more or less sales packages than you did last year? Have you recently moved and neglected to change your address or phone number? Be sure all of this vital information is up to date.
- Update and optimize your images. If the images on your website include clothing styles from the ’70s, you may want to consider updating your images. You may take pictures yourself with your digital camera (as long as they are professional quality!), or you can purchase some stock photography. Also, adding new images will bring a refreshing visual update to your faithful website visitors. While reviewing your images, you should also take a look at the display resolution of your images, versus the file’s resolution. If you have an image on your website that is being displayed at 250×225 pixels, but at full-size is 1000×900 pixels, then you should consider reducing the file’s resolution to the display size. Forcefully reducing image size through HTML not only compromises image quality, but also results in an unnecessarily slow page loading time. Ask your designer to optimize image sizes if this is an issue on your site.
- Improve your credibility. No one likes to see a “webmail” address listed on a website’s contact page. For example, email addresses ending in “@hotmail.com” or “@yahoo.com” are amateurish and have little place in business. These types of addresses are fine for personal accounts, but in the professional world, your email address should correspond with your website’s URL. Most hosting companies offer email solutions in addition to website hosting services, so talk to your hosting company if you require a professional email account.
- Clarify your navigation. Your navigation is the backbone of your website. Without navigation, your customers will not be able to access the information they need. In addition, your navigation must be clear and easily understood by the customer. Visitors have come to expect navigation links such as “About Us,” “Services,” “Portfolio,” and “Contact Us.” While it’s fine to be creative and vary link names, deviating too far from the norm may frustrate your customer and may drive them to a competitor’s website.
- Make your site more accessible. Not everyone can simply view your website on a PC or mobile device. Those who have vision impairments, are illiterate, or have a learning disability may use screen readers to review your site. Screen readers are programs that take what is being displayed on the screen and interpret the site’s content into audio or braille. To make your site more accessible, be sure that your images include “alt” tags in the HTML, which can be read by a screen reader. Also, consider assigning a relative size value to your font sizes (in units of ems instead of pixels), so that those who cannot read small text will be able to increase the font size as needed. Image maps, in addition to being an outdated method of navigation, are often unreadable by screen readers and should also be removed from your website.
- Add a site map. Site maps are a useful navigation item, as they provide a quick reference point for the link hierarchy of your site. Site maps list all pages within your site, providing an alternate method of accessing information to your customer. As a bonus, site maps improve search engine optimization by ensuring that all pages can be located by search engine crawlers. In the past, site maps were often included as a link to a separate page away from the main navigation. The emerging trend is to add your site map as a part of your website’s footer area, creating a table of contents for your entire site. Your best approach to including a site map depends on the design and layout of your website, so ask your designer about best approaches.
- Eliminate spam comments from your blog or forum. Spam is a nuisance to everyone and no one wants to read spam comments on your blog or forum. Spam takes away from the important information and can annoy your reader into leaving your site. Blogging software such as WordPress includes plugins that allow you to monitor comments before they are posted, which can greatly reduce the amount of active spam on your site. If you find that you do not update your forum or blog often and that there is more spam than actual content on either, you may want to consider removing your blog or forum completely.
- Check keywords and site statistics. Are you including keywords throughout your website that are appropriate for your business? Make a list of words and phrases that customers might associate with your business, including what products or services you offer and your location. Then, be sure that these words and phrases are included in page titles, HTML meta tags and page content. Generally, each page should include one to three words or phrases that are related to your business. These are the keywords that customers will enter into a search engine when looking for businesses such as yours. Including keywords on your site improves the chances that your website will be crawled on a search engine and returned to the user. Also, consider integrating web statistics into your site. Statistics software, such as Google Analytics, not only shows you how many visits your site has obtained in a span of time, but also shows what keywords were entered to find your site. Statistics programs can provide insight into what campaigns work to drive business to your site, and which are falling short.
- Add a News and What’s New section. Adding a news section to your home page is a great way to assure that content is constantly changing. Allowing the same old content to linger on your home page for too long gives the appearance that you have allowed your website fall by the wayside. Add a section with news tidbits from your business. Or, if you have a Twitter account that you update regularly, consider adding your Twitter RSS feed to your home page. This is a great way to update both your Twitter account and your website simultaneously.
- Consider a redesign. All website designs become outdated with time. You should consider a redesign within at least two years of your last design update, as long as your are continuously monitoring your site and making tweaks and minor updates in between. Redesigning your website lets your customers know you are up with the times, and also gives you a chance to reorganize information that is more beneficial in attracting visitors. If you do not currently have the time or budget to undergo a complete website redesign, consider just redesigning the home page. This brings a fresh look to your site, while keeping the majority of your site familiar to regular visitors.
By making some of these tweaks and adjustments to your current site, you will be well on your way towards running a user-friendly website that promotes your business and provides a strong professional image.
Melissa likes the Web and building things that live there. We ask her to do something, she disappears for a while, comes up with an intelligent design, then builds a Web site around that design that will not only do her bidding, but will do the bidding of their new owners. Over the past few years she has worked on (often single-handedly) the design, production and launch of 100s of websites. She usually does this quietly, efficiently, and with a smirk that makes everyone else wonder what she's up to. And, if you ask her nicely, she might also agree to design a tattoo for you, although that will have to wait until after work.