Business Articles

If you're ready to get your website in shape to SELL this year, start by giving yourself a great big pat on the back! For many just the thought of organizing a website to be profitable can feel like a nightmare, but it sure doesn't have to be.

Great organization can be achieved by following my simple, 5-Step process:

1. Keep it Consistent

If you've ever visited a model home community then you already know that home builders hire interior designers to furnish and decorate their houses to SELL. The designers select a color pallet (usually three colors) and cycle through those colors with varying percentages in each room of the house. The entire decoration style whether French country, Venetian, Contemporary or any style is consistent throughout the house. Why? Because it creates warmth, is inviting to the home buyer and helps them visualize living in that house.

YOU can follow this same formula to achieve a consistent look and feel on your website. The same "look and feel" across your website is one of the best ways you can showcase your business, appear professional, build rapport with your customers and help them visualize doing business with you.

Start by making sure:

• Your font sizes and typefaces are consistent across ALL of your pages. Page headers (titles) should be the same size, color and font no matter the page.
• Contact information is consistent. If you use a website URL, email, phone number, address or a combination of these, make sure it's the same for each page it's placed on.
• Keep colors for borders, accents and information boxes consistent. As your customer, I shouldn't see holiday light borders on one page and race car borders on another.
• That you limit the use of loud colors or flashing graphics. Don't distract your customer from the most important thing they need to do while visiting your website with too many fancy moving objects. Remember, less is more.

What can you do with your website to decorate it for success?

2. Follow the 2-click Rule

I recently saw the new KIA Fest Car Commercial, have you seen it? The salesman is dancing to the music from Flashdance and taking customers immediately (while dancing) to what that one special car they came to find. In the end he's working so quickly and with so much enthusiasm that he works up a sweat, dives into a chair and they pour water on him, right out of the movie!

Although it was hysterical and I laughed, we could all learn a lesson from this guy. Help your customers quickly find what they need.

You can do this easily using my "2-click Rule." Look closely at your website's navigation...can your customers quickly find products or services in 2 clicks or less? If not, it's time to get busy!

Modify your site's menu structure so that access to the products, services and support pages are not "buried" inside interior pages of the website. Right from the top-level products page you should offer the option to select the product category that your customer needs without losing sight of the rest of your website.

If you have a very large website (10+ pages) consider using a dynamic menu (drop-down menus etc) that unfolds so your customers can quickly locate what they need without even leaving the current page. There are tons of free dynamic menu scripts available at Dynamic Drive. Check them out at http://www.dynamicdrive.com

3. Group Like Items Together

Sit down with the list of products or services you are selling. Organize them into groups (or categories) that make sense to your customers and that compliment the items. If you sell shoes online, don't place summer flip-flops on the same page as Winter hiking boots.

You can take categories and grouping one step further by considering a shopping cart with the ability to suggest products which go nicely with a customer's current product or service selection. This is called "cross-selling" and its a method that can help boost your sales. For instance, if you sell jewelry and I've selected a colorful necklace, recommend the matching or coordinating bracelet and earrings if they are available.

Not only do you make it easier for customers to notice items they might not have thought to look for, typically the shopping cart will provide a one-click link that will easily add the new product to the cart without even exiting the current page.

4. Place your FREE Items on the Home page

Show your customers the value of doing business with you by offering them a taste of your expertise available from the HOME PAGE. If you sell vitamins, offer a free report on nutritional information; if you sell workout memberships, offer me tips on exercises I can do to stay in shape and so on.

In many cases new customers won't decide to purchase from you until you have built a relationship with them. Free reports are a wonderful way to build rapport and create a customer list you can continue to market to. Be sure your free report is linked to a great customer management tool. You can visit my resources page for a great list of tools I use to manage my business at http://www.superbwebdesign.net/resources.htm

5. Make Customer Service Priority #1

Show your customers you are here to stay. Prominently display (upper right hand corner of your site and the bottom of every page) at least two methods they can use to contact you with questions or concerns. Use slightly larger font and perhaps BOLD to make it stand out.

My recommendation is you provide a phone number AND an email address. Make sure you respond quickly (within 24 hours) to any contacts you receive.