5 Important things to Add to Your Website this year

by Simon on January 14, 2011

Well, the new year is now upon us and for those of you in Business it is a chance to take stock of what happened last year and decide whether you want more of the same, less of the same or something completely different.

All of you have websites and I want to focus in on using the websites as one of your most powerful tools.

Lets imagine it to be the salesperson in your business that never sleeps, it is the store front that never closes and the light house that never turns off its light, trying to attract customers like moths to a flame..

In short it is the one tool that delivers you a really good return on your investment so long as you apply some basic principles..

Here are 5 things that I suggest you may wish to review so that your site is doing its best for your bottom line..

1. A Lead capture generation process…

If your website is a Lead generation tool then it is very important to make sure that it is designed to attract exactly the right kind of leads and once they get there, make sure you give something of value and at the very minimum collect email addresses. Set the site up as a landing page so that as soon as they arrive you have made an offer of value that, if accepted, is delivered immediately. On all our sites we make use of a really good database creation tool called Aweber . It collects email addresses, allows message tracking, manages your database and tracks the clicks made by your readers.. In fact you may have noticed that this newsletter is managed by Aweber. There’s proof in the pudding that it works eh??

2. Optimise the written content for Search Engine indexing

There is a strategy behind writing any content and putting it online. It’s called SEO ( Search Engine Optimisation) and it basically gets you to develop content so that Google and other search engines, view your sites and indexes it easily so that your browser is able to deliver the results of a viewers search request quickly and easily, and based on how well indexed your site is Google gives it a priority when it displays it.. Your goal is to set it up so well that your site arrives on page 1 of those results..And find a good tool to tell you whether or not your site is working well.

Here is a free tool that I use to do analysis on pages and on content.

Click here to Download it and start using it..

3. Start Blogging and Set up your RSS..

Whoa there…! I heard you say…Whats Blogging and What the heck is RSS..??? Well two very key ingredients to creating traffic to your website actually. A blog is a way to start creating a following of people who like your content so much they just keep coming back to your site and the RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) is a way to allow them to subscribe to your content and read it so they don’t have to physically visit your site to read it.. How does that sound…easy?? Well actually it is easy, as long as you follow some simple steps. But lets back up a second , why would you start a blog?? Quite simply so that you can keep a regular contact with your customers and attract new customers..Your goal is to be come viewed as an expert and have people like what you are talking about or like the environment that you are creating. An example of a reasonable blog is www.kiwiblog.co.nz where the community has been built up because the owner of the site has set it up so that people are encouraged to comment..Imagine being able to do that with your customer community.. It might work or it might not but by having a good blog going it opens up the channels to market to people who already think your content is valuable.. Setting up an RSS feed is reasonably simple as well. I am using a service called feedburner to allow people to subscribe to my sites. I will be filming an instructional video very shortly to show you how to set that up so stay tuned..

4. Video

Well at the risk of rambling on about something that I am passionate about and boring you all to tears, I have to say that using video on your websites is by far….the… most… effective sales tool in your arsenal when it is combined with a good blog.. Teach your market how to appreciate your product or service and educate them how they can get the best out of it..Sometime I overdo the words “Emotional Journey” but it captures exactly what the idea is with video and what you must do for your viewers..Allow them to make a buying decision from their keyboards..It so reinforces your call to action which by the way many people seem to forget about. So now you won’t..

5. Analytics

Why is analytics the last of the 5? Well simply put if you dont know where your customers are coming from its very very hard to put some bait out to bring in some more. The most widley know Analytics package is the googel one. And since they purchased the software off of the company in wall street , the analytics that they promote has had several great features added to it. Look at it this way, using the google tool will tell you which keywords have been used to find you, when they arrived , how long they stayed on your site and where they went within your site. Isnt that kind of like having a retail shop? Of course it is…if you dont collect those kinds of numbers it is harder to keep improving the performance of your site. Imagine you have an e-commerce site and you know that one little string of keywords brings a flood of customers…If you didnt realise that they were responsible for that flood of traffic then you wouldnt really be able to optimise the site or even worse in your tweaking of the site you might even get rid of them… Its valuable information.

So, there you go.. 5 important things you should be considering for your website , what ever it is and whatever it sells. And again at the risk of boring you to tears, we chose WordPress for our training courses because it gives its site owners ease of administration and the ability to add those 5 little beauties quickly and easily..

And learning how to build a site with WordPress is as easy as enrolling for one of our courses either the online course or the offline one.. But then you all know that.. :-)

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