Prepare
Your Web Site To Get The
Most Out Of Online Marketing
by Biana Babinsky
Plenty of excellent advice about promoting your online business to
prospective customers is widely available: get your web site listed
in search engines, exchange links with other web sites, send e-mail
to prospects, etc. However, a crucial step is usually omitted from
articles about online marketing: what should you do before you start
promoting your business online? Here are the top three items you should
consider before you begin an online marketing campaign to promote
your web site:
Is
your web site user-friendly?
Proofread your web site and ask at least one other
person to do the same. It is very easy to miss a minor error after
you have been staring at your content for a long time, so the importance
of having an external reviewer cannot be overemphasized. Glaring
grammatical and spelling mistakes on a web site look unprofessional;
you should find and remove them before the site is deployed.
Make sure that your contact information is present.
It is not necessary to put contact information on every page; a
single contact page (with links pointing at it from other pages)
will suffice. Your customers should be able to contact you easily.
Be consistent. Use the same navigation system on
each page. This helps your customers navigate your site, and makes
it easy for them to find a product or service that interests them
the most. Avoid complex custom graphical navigation systems; your
customers will not waste their time trying to figure out how to
use your site — they will simply go elsewhere.
Is your web site Search Engine Friendly?
Most people find web sites that interest them by
using Search Engines. Your site should be Search Engine-friendly
in addition to being user-friendly. It will take much longer for
your site to become listed in search engines (if it gets listed
at all) if it cannot be effectively spidered by a search engine.
This will dramatically reduce customer traffic.
To make your web site Search Engine-friendly, make
effective use of the Title tag, as well as the Description and Keywords
meta tags. The Title tag should have information that describes
the page; your company name is (usually) not a descriptive title.
Most search engines use the Title tag as the first line of your
listing; strive to make your Title tag say "click me"
to a prospective customer. The Description meta tag should have
an accurate description of your page, and the Keywords meta tag
should contain a set of keywords that list key concepts mentioned
on the page.
Does your web site have a Newsletter?
Get your customers to come back even before your
web site goes live. Set up a newsletter for your site, and ask your
visitors to subscribe to it. Use the Newsletter to send messages
about new products (or services) or special offers provided on your
site. This will remind your subscribers about your business and
help build your brand image.
Do not send messages to the Newsletter too often, as this will overwhelm
your subscribers and your newsletter may end up in their "Trash"
mailbox along with the other two hundred spam messages they receive
daily. On the other hand, an annual newsletter is not sufficient
to reinforce your brand image. The ideal frequency is once or twice
per month.
Spam (unsolicited commercial e-mail) is a growing problem. Your
customers will be reluctant to subscribe to your Newsletter unless
they have assurance that their e-mail address will not be shared
with third parties. Do not sell, share, or otherwise distribute
your subscriber list; post a notice about your privacy policy on
your web site to let your subscribers know that their e-mail address
will be protected.
Avocado Consulting, Inc offers a complete range of
innovative consulting services that enable businesses to leverage
the full power of the Internet. We help your business thrive by providing
superior online
marketing services, user-friendly web design, and innovative technical
consulting.
Copyright © Avocado Consulting, Inc. All Rights
Reserved.
|
