Your website is far more than an online brochure.
It should aim to:
- Educate the user about your products or services
- Answer the user’s questions
- Ensure you are seen as trustworthy
- Capture information from users, particularly if your product is expensive
A good website from a user’s perspective
You generally need to capture a user’s interest within a few seconds, otherwise they’ll hit the back button – so make those few seconds count!
You generally need to capture a user’s interest within a few seconds, otherwise they’ll hit the back button – so make those few seconds count
The following qualities will make your site immediately appealing:
- Good, clear design – don’t confuse your user
- Easy to navigate – make it easy for your user to find what they want, have a clear navigation structure
- Avoid flash or moving images, which will eventually distract the user
- Have a great homepage clearly describing who you are and what you do so the user can have trust in you
- Have multiple web pages, ideally one set up to describe each product or service that you offer. Make it obvious to the user they have found the correct page by including plenty of headings and subheadings.
- Have multiple contact methods on a separate ‘contact us’ page. Include your phone number on every page – some clients will always prefer to talk when placing an order, so don’t risk alienating them. Make sure you include your address (which should be a business address, not a home address) as some people distrust websites without a physical address
- Tell your users why your products or services work. Don’t just tell them what you do – write the pages from their perspective. Try and avoid the word ‘I’ or ‘we’ if you can, wherever possible. This will help convince the user that your product fulfils their need
- Include a ‘meet the staff’ page if possible, complete with staff photos and short profiles. This builds trust in your company
- Update your website regularly. Consider having a news section or something similar. You need to make it ‘sticky’, which means users want to keep coming back to see what has changed
- Provide prices on every page or have a separate price-list page. Some users shop around for prices and disregard websites that do not include price
Google’s perspective
It is important that Google regards your website highly, as this means you’ll be higher up in the search results. Here are some steps you can take to improve your Google ranking.
- Choose a clear domain name, ideally with no dashes or underscores.
- Make sure the page descriptions on every page are succinct and entice the user to visit your website. Often, the page description appears next to the website name in searches
- Make sure each page has a sensible name that matches the product you are offering. Don’t include the name of your company in the title – just the name of the product. An example would be Time_Management_Training. Google allows underscores to break up words
- A website that changes regularly will rapidly ascend the Google search listings. One way to do this is to ensure you buy a website that can be updated regularly through a content management system (CMS)
- Avoid flash websites as Google is unable to read them correctly
