What makes a GREAT
website?
If you have a website or are starting to build one here’s 30 Tips you can’t live without
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What Makes a Website GREAT? Here are three rules and 30 tips to help you achieve this… 1. 2. 3.
Attract prospects - Site Visibility Convert to action - Web Design, User Experience and Functionality, Repeat Visit Measurement (ROI) - Google Analytics Eye Tracking Click Maps and Website Optimiser.
Contents WEBSITE DESIGN 1. Position the brand 2. Make it Inviting 3. Keep it Relevant 4. Landing Pages 5. KISS me! (Keep it simple, stupid) USER EXPERIENCE & FUNCTIONALITY 6. Target 7. Easy Navigation 8. “Please let me pay” 9.Customised experience 10. Blogging WEBSITE CONTENT 11. Publish, Don’t Advertise 12. Two-way dialogue 13.Competitions & Freebies 14. Shout 15. Podcasts & Vodcast REPEAT VISITS 16. Bookmarks 17. Update Your Website 18. Website Speed 19. Encourage referral 20. Reasons To Return WEBSITE VISIBILITY SEO (On Page Factors) 21. Insert Keyword Friendly Meta Data 22. Create Dedicated Keyword Intensive Pages 23. Internal Linking – Google Loves It! 24. Header Tags (H1, H2, H3) 25. The First Few Sentences SEO (Off Page Factors) 26. Check your links 27.Develop Relationships 28. Industry Lists 29. Back Link Analysis. 30. Guest Posting 193a Bay Street Brighton Vic 3186 T 03 9945 8222 F 03 9596 9019 E info@bluefrogmarketing.com.au W www.bluefrogmarketing.com.au
WEBSITE DESIGN 1. Position the brand Have a single-minded proposition on every page. You may have never heard of Flippa before, but when you land here there is no confusion as to what they do; The number 1 marketplace for Buying and Selling Websites. It doesn’t matter how complicated your suit of offers or brands, you can always simplify it. Disney promise “Fun Family Entertainment”
2. Make it Inviting Consider your website is a shop (even for B2B service) including signage, a front door with a loss leader offer to entice, some top shelf exclusive products to excite, Great service if you need it and an easy way to trial or buy before you go. Like a shop it is also good to know other people are in there or have been there and recommend the products and service.
3. Keep it Relevant With the clutter of message growing daily and the fragmentation of media and attention spans, relevance is King! ! Reduce your bounce rate (people leaving your website too quickly) Improve your conversion to an action (click, download, inquire). It may sound overly simple but If prospects asked for “this”, don’t show them “that”.
4. Landing Pages This section is intentionally displayed from the perspective of the visitor. “Where am I?” Headline must scream, “Yes you have arrived” “Why bother?” Bullets points on benefits and uses (not features!)
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“Help me believe” Address fears and solve problems with trust and credibility elements; eg, Accreditations, Testimonials, Case Studies, affiliations, awards, physical address, privacy policy, returns, guarantees, delivery and results promises, after sales support. Support this with images; products, instructions, manuals, packaging, use & benefit, customers and service staff
“Ok, I’m ready” Give a very clear call to action and a secondary option with low involvement. Eg Order here and download “How-to Guide”
before
after (+51%)
5. KISS me! (Keep it simple, stupid) There’s no excuse for over complicating any page other than bad planning. If you know with whom you are talking and what they want you should be able to put that in front of them quickly and easily. If you don't, you run the risk they will leave out of frustration or boredom.
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USER EXPERIENCE & FUNCTIONALITY See Appendix A for website eye tracking study See Appendix B for popular portfolio site design features
6. Target Develop real personas to help you decide what content you should be producing; which content those people are more likely to share in social media; what they're more likely to subscribe to and the things they're probably searching for... and deliver consistent and united messages
7. Easy Navigation Visitors are generally impatient and want to solve their problems quickly. Make sure you have clear paths in & out so visitors know how to get there but also how to get back; out; or to another section. People don’t like being trapped; they feel uncomfortable and will leave in frustration. Simple navigation with less clicks leads to more pages viewed and for longer; increasing the chance of conversion.
8. “Please let me pay” Some visitors already know what they want; some of them have no idea. It is essential to visibly provide a direct path to the single objective whether it is research, trial or purchase. There is nothing more frustrating on the web than having navigated a complex site, researched the product, made the decision to buy, then struggling with the payment. Don’t make them jump through hurdles with long mandatory forms when they don’t even know you.
9.Customised experience Instead of showing them a long list of services that you offer, let them select their industry, then show them options that are relevant to that industry. The same applies to product, they can select Square widgets, and then Red widgets, then view the list from cheapest to most expensive. The content now shown is exactly what they want to see. They will be much happier and possibly more receptive to reading about complimentary products you put there in the hope of up selling.
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10. Blogging • • •
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Have an image on each post for visitors to gravitate to and recall later. Use both RSS subscription and email To get visitors to comment: ask a question; be controversial; leave topic open. To find a topic, have a look at your customer emails. Chances are that if they had a question, others will want to know too. Encourage all staff to contribute ideas and/or articles, especially those at the front Leverage CTA to drive traffic to your site in each article. When they land encourage them to register, opt-in, download free content, start a trial or buy a product/service.
WEBSITE CONTENT 11. Publish, Don’t Advertise The foundation of a good social media strategy is to be publishing and creating some great content. Advertising gets a low response compared with information
12. Two-way dialogue Having gone to the effort of building a user-friendly site and driving traffic to it, we need to encourage feedback. This information is great for creating your FAQ’s and topics for content generation (see blogging section below) You can use web forms, opts in for emails and newsletters and buttons that say; Inquire; Free Quote; Free consultation; Your comments; Your Questions; etc. BUT two-way dialogue doesn’t just happen by putting a form on your site you have to actively create it through developing content that provokes a response where the user benefits from responding.
13.Competitions & Freebies Competitions can be great in creating a ‘buzz’ around your website. They may bring new visitors to your website via a viral promotion or simply engage existing visitors in a better way. People LOVE something for nothing. · A white paper · A free consultation · A coupon to your business · A discount off an associates business
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14. Shout When you update the content on your website, shout it out! Tell everyone you know; they may be interested; they may know someone who is interested or they may simply trash the email but think of you as an industry leader and prolific author of valuable content. Either way there is no harm in helping people access information. If they don’t want it they’ll tell you by unsubscribing and if you use email software like mailchimp or campaign monitor it will remove that person from your database automatically.
15. Podcasts & Vodcast In the last few years podcasts and vodcasts have come of age. Here is a brief summary for those who don’t quite understand the buzz: Podcasts give you a great opportunity to drop in references to your commercial work whilst giving expertise away for free.
REPEAT VISITS 16. Bookmarks An easy way to encourage visitors to return to your website is to include a ‘bookmark this site’ link on all of your pages. When clicked, a snippet of your website is then kept in the visitors bookmarks tab. This will encourage visitors to return to your website in the future.
17. Update Your Website Your website has to be up-to-date. The Internet is too competitive for you to expect that an outdated website will keep peoples attention. This is a simple tip and one that may seem obvious. Make your content of interest to your visitors. Write in an engaging way and about areas of real interest.
18. Website Speed With today’s high-speed internet connections and advances in web development techniques, there is no reason that your website should be slow. Users will not stay at your website if every page takes a lifetime to load. Here are 8 possible causes for slow-loading pages. 1. Unoptimized Images (too big for web) 2. Bad Web Hosting 3. Use of Server-Intensive Dynamic Scripts 4. No Compression of Web Pages 5. Too Much Flash 6. Bulky Code 7. External Embedded Media 8. SPAM
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19. Encourage referral Free offer if you bring a friend, forward to a Friend, Social Media Buttons - Like, Follow, Recommend.
20. Reasons To Return Give website visitors a reason to return to your website. A great way is to offer time sensitive promotions. • Offer time sensitive promotions. • Promise new content • Podcasts and Vodcasts • Email campaigns & Newsletters
WEBSITE VISIBILITY SEO (On Page Factors) 21. Insert Keyword Friendly Meta Data Make all your Page Titles Meta Descriptions and Keywords unique on all the pages of your website. Don’t keep repeating your company name. Really describe what is happening on that page.
22. Create Dedicated Keyword Intensive Pages You should create dedicated pages on your website that target individual keywords or phrases. The reason for this is that Google wants to direct users to pages of information that really relates to their search query.
23. Internal Linking – Google Loves It! i) The more links you have from your homepage the less weighting each of them will have. Therefore you should be selective regarding the range of pages that you want to optimise. ii) You should submit your sitemap to Google. iii) The text that appears over the link should contain the keyword / phrase you are working with.
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24. Header Tags (H1, H2, H3) When you are creating your pages, you should display the most important keywords of the page in H1 text. Google is not easily fooled and if you make the entire text H1 then it will all be deemed unimportant. (The same goes for bolding keywords in the body copy.) Try this to find out how Google sees your site: View/Page Style/No Style
25. The First Few Sentence Google places more weight on the first few sentences of text on any given page rather than the text
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People don’t like surprises – make sure your titles, headings, keywords, description, and URL reflect the actual content on each web page The web is all about unique content – duplicating titles, keywords, and content on multiple pages may be interpreted as spam by search engines, so make each page of your site unique The early bird gets the fatter worm – words used earlier in the title, URL, heading, and page content are given more weight than later words Keep it short and sweet – the more words you add, the more diffused your power will be for each word, so use fewer and more focused words Sell your page to the reader – your page title and description will show up when you are listed in search engine results, so optimize them for click-through appeal by making them sell the content on the page
SEO (Off Page Factors) 26. Check your links http://www.OpenSiteExplorer.org or http://www.MajesticSEO.com
27.Develop Relationships It is normal business practice to network. You should be able to find associates or friends who are willing to promote your website, provided you promote theirs. This might mean a link on your website to theirs (and viceversa) or it might mean swapping ads. This works well with businesses that have strong synergies for example, A local sports shop and a local sports club may consider putting ads on each others sites to help their memebers/customers.
28. Industry Lists Most industries are represented in some way by an industry body (or bodies). Most of these bodies will have a website and most of these websites will feature a section where the public can ‘Find A Member’ and their website. Search through Google for your industry bodies and 193a Bay Street Brighton Vic 3186 T 03 9945 8222 F 03 9596 9019 E info@bluefrogmarketing.com.au W www.bluefrogmarketing.com.au
related ones and list your company there. Try to include an interesting bio that sets you apart and don't’ be afraid to put a specific offer to encourage visitors to contact you and to measure the effort of listing. Remember though, it’s a volumes game so list as many as you can. It will also help with Google rankings.
29. Back Link Analysis. If a company links to your competitor, they may link to you. Once again use www.OpenSiteExplorer.org or www.MajesticSEO.com to see who is connecting to your competitors then consider contacting them. Obviously if they have a close relationship it may be difficult but if the main site is trying to provide an extra service to their customers by helping them find suppliers like you, then they may be happy to put your link on their site.
30. Guest Posting First identify the main blogs covering your niche by using Google Blog Search (http://blogsearch.google.com/) and looking around your main keywords. When you find some good blogs, look for a blogroll, to see whom they link to, and read at least a dozen of their most recent blog posts and follow their links to other websites. This may be the best place to start, as these smaller blog sites might be more receptive to publishing your guest post.
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Appendix A
Results of an website use eye tracking study • • • • • • • • • • • •
Headlines draw eyes before pictures. People scan the first couple words of a headline. People scan the left side of a list of headlines. Your headline must grab attention in less than 1 second. Smaller type promotes closer reading. Navigation at the top of the page works best Short paragraphs encourage reading. Introductory paragraphs enjoy high readership. Ad placement in the top and left positions works best. People notice ads placed close to popular content. People read text ads more than graphic ads. Multimedia works better than text for unfamiliar or conceptual information
The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes By Steve Outing and Laura Ruel Eyetrack III project managers
Appendix B Survey of Web design agencies portfolio sites • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
82% of the portfolio websites they analyzed have a light design, with neutral, calm colors, 79% have traditional “block” layouts, with two to three columns clearly separated and a simple, conveniently located navigation menu, 79% of websites have some kind of introductory block in the upper area, 89% have horizontally centered layouts, 80% have large horizontal navigation, 51% have horizontal navigation with right-aligned elements, 89% do not have search functionality, Only 3.7% use Flash heavily throughout the website, A contact link appears in the upper-right corner 71% of the time, and/or in the footer 45.4% of the time, 89% link to the About page in the main navigation, Only 47.2% have a client page, 67.2% of portfolios have some form of standalone services page, 63.6% have a detailed page for each project, including case study, testimonials, slideshow with screenshots, drafts and sketches, 74.5% of websites have no workflow page, The contact page should contain driving directions, a phone number, email address, postal address, vCard and online form.
Smashing eBook Series: #1 Professional Web Design
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