The goal of any online business is to design a high performance website is to generate a positive turn on your investment. A smart design increases the overall efficiency of your website if it is set up to drive leads and converts those leads into sales. In order to drive leads to the website, the site must be ‘discoverable’ online – either through a strong presence in search results using search engine optimization (SEO), or via other online advertising methods and exposure. Once the user has arrived to the website, however, you must ensure that the site can be easily explored. Make sure the site is (1) easy to use and (2) helps your visitors to find what they want, and (3) encourages your visitors to take action.
1. Design
The layout of the website should be such that the navigation is easy. Each page should be accessible by a minimum number of clicks. Endless clicking only results in users getting frustrated by being lost on a site. Time is a valuable commodity and your visitors will not want to be wasting theirs. Site maps and page trails are easy ways to ensure users will always know where they are.
2. Keywords and Visibility
Understand how your customers are searching online and bring qualified leads to your website. Identify your most valuable keywords and use these specific terms for your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. There are a ton of tools available, some of which are free, in order to determine the most often searched terms in relation to your product or service.
3. SEO
To improve your online business, your website needs to support your SEO strategy. Your first step is to map the keywords to your website pages and identify what new pages you may want to create to support the keyword specific content. These ‘landing pages’ are like back doors into your website. It’s important to realize that a single webpage can truly only be relevant for a handful of terms. Therefore, keyword specific web pages are an ideal way to bring in qualified leads into your site and convert them to sales, especially if navigation is made easy and logical.
Each web page will support the keyword strategy through important code tags (such as the title tag, or meta data), and page content. Overall, you want to make sure the content you provide is relevant and interesting, as obviously fake or poorly written content can hurt your online reputation.
To support the SEO plan, the site URLs can be organized into and written as sub-domains which should reflect the keyword strategy. The use of sub-domains is an opportunity to communicate the theme of the website to the search engine and to define the importance of the subsequent sub-domain pages for specific keyword terms.
Additionally, the site should be search engine friendly. The exclusive use of flash technology ensures that no search engine will visit your site and thereby your site will not appear in search results for relevant terms. Not only will the exclusive use of flash prevent recognition by search engines; bear in mind that with the advent of the iPad, there are certain technologies, such as JAVA that are not supported. All aspects of the most current and most commonly used hardware and software must be considered.
4. Content Management System (CMS)
Decide how and how often you intend to update your site. A CMS offers the ability to create new pages on the fly and without the need of a professional to manage this function. If you are supporting lots of content or inventory that changes frequently, a CMS can help you to upload and make changes to website pages, almost effortlessly. Your time is as valuable as your customers’.
As with all online marketing, it is important to track conversions, to identify your cost per lead and consistently report on your results to determine your ROI (Return on Investment). In the end, the better your website is at converting visitors into sales, the faster your business will grow. The web designers and internet marketing specialists at TheeDigital specialize in creating search engine friendly CMS websites and enjoy providing insight and what we do. If you have any questions or comments – or are looking at getting a business-class website that generates leads and attention – just fill out our inquiry form to get started.
Tags: Web Design
