How does your website stack up?

Happy New Year!

The start of a new year is a fantastic time to take a look at your business website.

So how does your website stack up?

Is it fresh, modern and up-to-date?  Easy to navigate?  Or are there spelling errors, tired images and does the opening line (horror of horrors) say: 'Welcome to our website'?

If your website content is current, the information is easy to find, your text and images are interesting and upbeat, then that's great news.  If it isn't, then the time to do something about it is right now.

A website must hold attention, capture imagination and encourage a consequence.

Visitors to your website should be thinking about the information you have provided, not what is happening on each page of your website.  Unusual layouts can be distracting, so don't be tempted to re-invent something that's become the norm, simply because you think  its 'boring' or you want your site to be 'different'.

Make sure your website content is relevant and up-to-date.  Check for simple things - for example, saying something like, "I have been in business for 10 years", will be incorrect if you don't update it every year.  It would be far better to say, "I have been in business since 1993."

Keep things interesting.  Maintain a good mix of text and images on your website.  Too much text can feel overwhelming for the reader.  Images should be clear, sharp and not too big.  By all means use colour, but don't go crazy with too many font colours.  At the same time, just choose one or two font styles and sizes, and stick to them.

A little movement (e.g. revolving images) can create variety.  However, if there's too much going on, your visitors will get distracted and possibly annoyed by things whizzing across the page or if the pages take too long to load.  This will result in your visitors being discouraged from staying on your website for very long. 

Keep up with current trends. If someone visited your website on their mobile phone or tablet device, how well would your site perform?  Check that your website is compatible with current devices.

Make the most of Social Media.  Do you have a Facebook and/or LinkedIn page for your business? If not, why not? Make sure you have links going from your Social Media pages to your website and from your website back to your Social Media pages.

Many smaller businesses don't have a website at all.

Are you really impressing your business prospects if they can only find you in online directories and on Google maps?  These days a company website is a basic, must-have marketing tool.  A website can make your company look just as good (if not better) than your larger competitors and it doesn't have to cost the earth.  So, why would you pass up that opportunity?
     
So, how much does a new website cost?

As a rule of thumb, it takes around 2 - 3 hours per page to create a new template-based website, however this can vary depending on the amount content required for each page, e.g. text, images, image sourcing/resizing, links, forms, maps, etc.

To find out more, email My Virtual Assistant today!