5 Steps To Make Your Web Site Work
A successful web site has happy visitors. Make your site informative and easy to use, and your visitors are that much more likely to want to do business with you!
We outline the 5 steps needed to create a web site that works for you and your visitors, and finish with a plan for implementing them.
1. Get clear on your goals.
Work out what you want to achieve from your web site, and what information or features would be needed on your site to achieve your goal.
- Do you need to provide information? On what topics?
- Do you need a way for visitors to contact you?
- What else do you need?
If you take the time to set your goals before you start, you'll be well on the way to having a site that works for you and your visitors.
2. Provide information that your visitors want.
A happy visitor is well informed. Think about who will be using your web site, and what they'll want to know. Make sure your web site contains that information.
Most practitioner sites should contain information on treatments, locations, and prices as a miniumum. You may want to include more information too, it depends on what your goals are, and who your visitors are.
3. Make it easy for visitors to find their way around your web site.
The number one reason that people leave a site is not being able to find what they were looking for. An intuitive site structure and good web design makes things easy to find.
A skilled web designer will be able to organise the information you'd like to include in your web site, and make it easy for visitors to navigate around your site.
4. Keep your web site up-to-date.
Your content must be up-to-date. If you're running a clinic, the information on your site might not change much, but if you run courses or workshops, you need to let your visitors know when the next one is planned, and how much it costs. Identify which areas of your web site need to be updated and how often.
5. Make sure you market your web site.
You will need to market your web site to get the most out of it. But hang on a minute you say, wasn't I building a web site to market my business? Your web site can work as an extra tool to market your business, but to do that, people need to be able to find your web site.
As a minimum, your site should be registered with the main search engines. You should also advertise your web site address on your current promotional material - your business cards, your adverts in the press, yellow pages and so on, and your promotional leaflets. This allows people who are already interested to find out more about you, and helps them on their way to becoming a customer. Internet marketing is a huge topic and there are lots of ways of marketing your web site if you have the inclination.
Next Steps
Building a web site that works from scratch
Ideally most of these steps are carried out before you even start to build your web site, so you're in a great position if you're building from scratch. Go through steps 1-4 carefully, making notes as you go. Whether you're planning to go it alone, or use a web design service like ours, planning things properly before you begin will result in a web site that works better for both you and your visitors.
Improving your existing web site
We'd suggest you go through the steps 1-5 to see where your web site could do better. If you're having trouble looking objectively at your site, we can independently audit your web site to see where it can be improved, providing recommendations to improve usability, visibility and credibility. Once you've identified any problems, work out what you could do to improve things, and get together a plan for making the changes.
Whether you're creating a new web site or improving your existing web site, print our worksheet to help you plan it right.
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