You know why you’re good and you know why your product should be the hottest thing on the market right now – so you tell the visitors to your site.  You describe the benefits, the shape, the color, and why it’s better than anyone else’s but can your visitors see quickly and easily exactly what it is you offer?  Do you tell them what problem you are solving?  Is it intuitive to navigate through your site?  Do you provide the information they really need – those things you would be asking if you were in the market for your product?

Too often you’re too close to be able to put yourself in your customers’ shoes.  You need someone from outside to take a fresh look and develop a strategy to take you from where you are to where you need to be.  After a short discussion with you to determine audience and purpose, I will provide you with an analysis that assesses your site’s success in meeting the following criteria and some recommendations for change:

• Attract – the right visitors to your site
• Engage – them quickly so they know they are in the right place
• Inform – them about your solution and how it solves the problem
• Convert – them into customers

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not important for all websites but if you want raise your site’s visibility in the search results pages, you’ll need to put some effort into your content and structure.  Companies such as Google are constantly changing search algorithms so that no one can ‘cheat the system’ – after all that is in no one’s best interest.  The concept, however, stays the same; if your site clearly discusses an issue or presents a product that is described in the search bar, it should appear in the search results.  The more explicitly you can define your products or services to match what you think your customers will be searching for, the closer you should come to the top of the list. 

Of course, it’s not quite that simple and there are many other factors (including paid advertising) that can tip the results, but if you are a small company with a local service you can go a long way to getting noticed.

Here are a few things that I could recommend for your site:

• Better integration of key terms and phrases that match a typical search.
• Intelligent use of ‘headings’ and site structure so that the search engines understand what they are seeing.
• Links, links, links.  The more people link to your site from outside, the higher it will rise in the search.  This can often be accomplished through engaging snippets posted in social media.

Why would you spend the time and effort to make changes to your site only to cross your fingers and hope it works?  You need to track, measure, analyze, and modify your strategy to get it right – and to keep getting it right.

A tool such as Google Analytics can provide you with pieces of code that are placed in your site to tell you the behaviors of your visitors.  For example, you may want to know how many people followed the banner link or watched a video.  If you get a thousand visitors to the page and only 2 watch the video maybe you didn’t describe it well enough, or maybe it’s not a video that is particularly relevant for your audience. 

Once you have information that tells you what people are looking at on your site, how they navigate through it, and what motivates them to contact you or buy your product, you are in a very good position to make your website successful.

Whether you like it or not, the recent astronomical growth of social media has not only blurred the lines between private and public, it has inadvertently opened up whole new avenues of advertising for companies small and large.

It used to be that your sister would buy a pair of shoes and you would love them and compliment her on her find.  Now she can post a picture of those shoes on her Facebook page (where she will be encouraged to tell where she bought them) and all her friends will see them.  If they ‘like’ them, all their friends will see them too.  If your sister were motivated enough to make a little amusing Vine or Instagram to post as well, the potential for the ‘likes’ to mount to at least the hundreds is quite within the realms of possibility.  And, because the recommendation comes from a friend, or a friend of a friend, it is far more believable and powerful than any ad in a magazine.  Welcome instant, ‘free’ advertising!

You can further ensure your brand visibility by creating your own company Facebook page, Twitter account and YouTube channel (if you have videos to share).  Once established though, you must keep them up to date.  Find useful articles or feature sales, offer promotions or tickets to events and you can increase your membership while consistently linking back to your site – integrating the content of both and escalating visibility. 

You don’t have the time, energy, or confidence?  Get in touch – I can help!