Kill The Pop-ups and Music
Are you being challenged on a daily basis to ‘keep up’ with the fast pace of business and technology? Is trying to understand the ‘social media marketing mix’ doing your head in? The key to your social media mix is your website and I’ve researched the ‘to do’ list of all the things you need to check and integrate into your website. So if you have a website that you can manage on your own perhaps some of these tips will help.
1. Design
Firstly anything that blinks, is animated or makes a noise - delete straight away. Auto music on the home page is very annoying and very outdated, kill the pop-ups and ensure you have an easy way for people to find their way back to your home page. No contrasting background colours – give me more white space. Your overall design should be compelling enough to do your brand justice and leave the text to work its magic in the white background space. Specify spacing requirements for headings, subheadings, bullet points and general paragraph text. It makes it much easier for your visitors to absorb information from your site. Ensure your fonts are readable. The best web friends fonts are Arial and Verdana.
2. Content
Do you take your reader from point A to B in a logical sequence? Use plenty of links within the text to help you do this. Ensure you have a clear and logical navigation system to take your reader through your website. Does each page have something compelling to offer or something of interest/value to your target audience? You want to engage and give valuable information make ensure your website does this.
3. Tech Bits
This is the one that caught me out a few times being an Apple user… but does your design work with different resolutions? Make sure your developers test the design on mobile applications as well. Have you tested across various platforms? From visiting sites using my Mac I realise that there are many websites that are simply not Mac friendly. Have you installed Google Analytics and if so have you set up the report to be emailed to you weekly? The data can be quite interesting and allows you to make some meaningful conclusions. Print-friendly pages… some visits may like to print information from your site that is relevant to them.
4. General Things
Please ensure your ‘contact us’ page is working. I learnt the hard way just recently… make a note to self and check it regularly. Have you included videos? It’s a great tool to demonstrate that you are a real business. Asking for feedback is a great way to engage with your customer and achieve continual improvements.
5. Promotion
There are a number of ways to promote your website. Links, Pay-per-Click etc to name a few… but today I would just like to talk about promoting your site on all the free search engine directories. There are hundreds of search engines and directories on the web. I’ve listed a few below but because the internet changes all the time, just do a search for ‘free search engine submission’ in Google and add your new website to all the FREE ones. Happy adding!
• www.google.com/addurl.html
• www.searchenginecolossus.com
• www.bigroo.com
• www.truelocal.com.au
• www.hotfrog.com.au
• www.ferret.com.au
With some people calling 2011 the ‘Year of Social Media’ your website is a vital element of your social media marketing mix. Remember if you’re in business today than you must have a website.
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Posted by Deborah Jackson on May 10, 2011
