Give Your Website A Makeover

Before you start worrying about marketing your website on the internet it always pays dividends to look at the website itself and get the fundamentals right before looking to shout about it from the virtual mountain-tops.

You may already have thought about the following 3 ways and some of you may already have them in place on your website. If so - congratulations - you’re well on the way to having a website that will bring you more business. So here they are then - the 3 Simple Ways To Dramatically Improve Your Website.

1. You’re Fishing For Visitors - You’ll Need This To Hook Them.

Ever been surfing on a website that held your attention and then the phone rings? You take the call, take some notes, get distracted, visit another website and before you know it you’ve forgotten all about the website you were viewing. It happens all the time and if you don’t have a Bookmarking tool on your website it will be happening with the people that come to your website. A Bookmarking tool is just a simple link or logo that your visitors can click on in order to bookmark your website or add it to their favorites. It is best to have the button located on the homepage but an even better option is to have a bookmarking button on every page so a visitor can actually bookmark each specific page of your website for safe-keeping.

2. ‘X’ Marks The Spot.

Visitors come to your website and if you’re lucky - they like it and click beyond the homepage. Excellent. But they can’t find what they’re looking for. Uh oh, you could be in trouble. There’s a lot of information on your website and Mr. Visitor doesn’t have time to sift through it all to find what he’s looking for. You’d better hope that he’s either very patient or that you’ve provided him with a simple map to help him get to the ‘treasure’ he is looking for. A Site Map is an essential item - particularly on larger websites.
There is nothing more frustrating than hunting around for something and wasting time when just a simple one pager that presents a summary of all the information on your website could be used. A Site Map should be reachable from all pages of your website in just one click and should have clickable links on it so that a visitor can zoom straight through to their desired location without having to hunt around. If you don’t give them a map your visitors may become frustrated searching around for that desired piece of information and they may leave your website never to return.

3. Don’t Make Your Visitors Have To Write An Email To Contact You

If you are inviting enquiries or contact from visitors to your website you need to provide them with a way of doing this that is as easy as possible for them. Just posting your email address on the website is not the best solution. Why? Because when they click on it they need to then create an email from scratch. Do you know how busy your visitors are? They hardly have time to read the content of your homepage - never mind create an email from scratch. The solution? You need to use a simple form. A form enables you to standardize the responses that you receive and it also makes it very simple for your visitors to get in touch with you - all they need to do is pop in their name, email address and tick a few boxes and that’s it.
Making it easy for your visitors to contact you isn’t the only reason that using a form is a great idea. Doing so means you can get some information back from each person that fills in the form. You can ask them how they discovered your website, which other websites they like to visit - you can ask them anything! Anything that is going to help you learn more about them, more about who they are and more about what will make them buy from you. You think they would tell you all this if they were creating an email from scratch? No - of course they wouldn’t! That’s why you need a form.

What marketing activities should you use to market your business?

Everywhere we turn, we’re being told “just do THIS” and we will instantly start making tons more money and getting all the clients we can handle. Everyone is promising the same thing. Use their marketing technique and in no time, clients will be beating down your door to buy your products and services. The problem is there are literally hundreds of ways you could market your business. You could easily spend years trying to find the ways that work best for you. Not to mention all the money you'd waste in the process. It's like trying to find that proverbial needle in a haystack. Please note that several of these marketing activities require that you have website. If you do not currently have a website I would recommend you make that job one in your marketing plan. Below are a variety of activities that you can utilize to effectively market your business:

Advertising
Affiliate Programs
Article Marketing
Auto responders
Blogging
Brochures
Direct Marketing
Email Marketing
Guerilla/Grassroots Marketing
Networking
Partnerships & Joint Ventures
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Podcasting
Public Relations
Publishing an Ezine
Referral Program
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Speaking Engagements
Teleseminars

Marketing Activities

Are you having a tough time trying to figure out the best ways to market your business?I know it can be overwhelming. There are a lot of choices.

Should you advertise?
Should you write articles?
Should you start a
blog?
Do you need a brochure?
Is direct marketing your best bet?
Should you publish an ezine?
Should you attend networking events?
And the list goes on and on and on!

I've been in marketing for over 15 years and I've probably tried just about every marketing activity out there.As a result, I have a pretty good idea of which activities are best suited for which kinds of people and businesses.

For example, if you hate to write, or you're just not very good at it, and you don't really have valuable knowledge about your industry to share, Article Marketing is probably not going to the best way to market your business. On the other hand, if your budget is extremely tight, and you have valuable information to share you can easily use Article Marketing to position yourself as an expert in your industry AND drive tons of traffic to your website, for free. There are some very simple criteria you can use to evaluate whether a marketing activity makes sense for your business. That's why I put together a Marketing Activity Selector. It gives you that criteria for 19 different marketing activities so you can easily choose the ones that are best for you and your business.And if you can pick the marketing activities best suited for you and your business, it will make putting your marketing plan into action that much easier.

Think about your strengths and weakness, your time constraints and budget. I’ll share the 19 activities with you in the next post.