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    Review your web presence 3/3


    There are several questions you should ask of your website. If you answer them honestly, you’ll know whether you need a new site or not.

    After you’ve gone through the process, ask some colleagues to do the same. See if your answers compare.

    (Source: http://articleaddict.com)

    Click each question to learn more.

    1. Do you know your audience? [more]

    Why do the people who you value most visit your site? Are you meeting their needs? Know your audience and meet their needs and you will build deeper trust. Talk to your users. Find out what they need from you. This can be achieved by asking a few searching questions and getting feedback from existing customers. Pertinent questions include: Why do they wish to visit you? What do they want to do on the site? How did they find you online? Do some unofficial usability testing on your site. For example, ask visitors to accomplish a task. You’ll be amazed and humbled by the results. Run a simple site survey to find out why people are visiting your site, what they like, and what they hate.

    2. Does your website deliver on the core goals of your business or campaign? [more]

    Does your website deliver on the core goals of your business or campaign? These days, your website is likely to be the primary way people engage with your business. As your business changes, your website needs to reflect your greatest successes. You need to highlight the important issues, such as new products and services that support your business goals. You also need to track the metrics that matter.

    3. Does your website have clear calls to action? [more]

    All too often there are too many things to do on a site, so nothing important gets done. Your website needs to focus its attention on highlighting the two or three key actions you need people to take. Then you need to create a hassle-free way for them to accomplish those tasks.

    4. How will your audience come back? [more]

    Getting your website users to take action is great. However, you should also plan to build long-term engagement amongst your users. Think about the different degrees of participation your clients want. Then develop the tools and opportunities that allow them to engage where they are most comfortable. This is called building a ‘ladder of engagement’. It can be automated using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology. By capturing information about your customers, you can build a detailed profile or persona, which is very useful for matching your services to their requirements.

    5. Are you listening to your audience? [more]

    Monitoring social networks and listening to the conversations taking place within them is an excellent way to find out what people think about your organisation. You can use this insight to find out how they want to engage with you, and this informs what ‘rungs’ you build into your ladder of engagement. The stronger your ladder, the more successful your organisation or campaign will become. Listen to your audience by finding out where your supporters hang out online and what social networks they have joined and setting up a business page on Facebook and Twitter. You can also use Google Alerts to find out who’s talking about you. Visit these sources often and become part of the conversation. Integrate what you learn to change what your organisation thinks/says/does.

    6. Where are you losing visitor traffic and conversions? [more]

    Organisations are complex. Unfortunately, this complexity carries over into the structure and design of websites. This can result in a confusing experience for the user and a failure to convert visitors into clients. The message is this: keep it simple. Ask yourself are people getting lost in your internal language/department structure? Are your action pages failing to get people to take action? Employing simple language, simplifying online forms, making catchy graphics for key actions and following other best practice for design and usability will go a long way to driving more value from your digital presence. Set up and analyse goal pages in your analytics software (goal pages are the pages you are attempting to lead your customers towards so that they will perform an action such as booking). Test your site to see if visitors understand what you want them to do. Remove any barriers that prevent those actions from being taken. Use images that clearly reflect actions you want people to take.

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