Webupon

So you’re building a website. You want it to rank high in search engines. And you’re reading everything you can on SEO and Search Engine Optimization and how to position your website higher in Google rankings.

Well, search engine placements do little for non-converting websites. Would you rather tell people you get thousands of hits to your website, or tell them you get an abundance of work from the few followers of your site?

It’s a numbers game, but it’s not about large numbers of viewers. It’s about numbers of prospects contacting you for work.

So let’s review some of the systems that need be in place to better market your website.

Customer Personas

If you don’t take the time to know your customers they won’t spend a dime to use your services/products.

Identifying customer personas involves knowing who your customers are. Their demographics. Their wants, needs, interests, and motivations.

Make a list of the different types of people that have a need for what you’re selling. Who are they? Draw a conclusion on what are their personalities. Give a name to this persona. Sketch a picture that best describes this group.

Comparitive Analysis

It’s better to learn from someone else’s mistakes than suffer the consequences of your own.

See what your competition is doing. Create categories to “rank” them by. What sets them apart from the crowd? How do they do it? What can you do better?

Always remember, never to talk ill of your competition. If you have to bring them up, they’re “nice people”. Down-talking people make you look worse.

Flow Charts

Have a systematic way of doing things. Your business should be able to survive without you being there to oversee every operation.

Each page of your website should have a purpose, a function. If every page of your site is dedicated to saying the same thing, about how great your service is, than you need to revert back to comparative analysis and take note that your site will be another one of thousands all saying the same thing: “please use us”.

Show your customer value. Offer tools that explain more about what you do and what you have to offer. You should chart the navigation of your site and lead your customer to buy your product.

Your landing page should not be the sell all page where you put all your efforts into gaining a sale. Moreso, this should be a page that compels the user to read more into your business. Each page thereafter should have a goal. And a step to engage the user again and get to that goal if not suceeded at first.

Site Map

Don’t let valuable sources of information get lost.

A site map is a list of all the resources in your site. This is a link directory of all the content in your webspace.

Wireframes

When building your website, you need to have a blueprint.

Wireframes are visual outlines of what your pages will look like. They reference the layout of the different elements on your web page.

Usability Tests

Think your site is great? Think again.

Get some feedback on your site. Have a panel of users interact with your website and let you know what they think about it.

What you think is the greatest invention may not work well to others.

It takes more research than keyword density and writing optimized titles to attract business through your website. Studying more on these subjects will benefit you in further developing your website. You want a site that works for you. Not a site you need to work at. Invest some thought and time in implementing these strategies and you’ll see greater results and increse in your return on investment. Good luck in your web design process.