14 Ways Your Website Can Support Your Marketing Efforts

These days you gotta have a website if you're in business, and most people do. I can think of one person who doesn't, but only one and even he is thinking that it would be a good idea to have one.

Your website is the core of you online marketing, and it should support your other marketing efforts. What? You ONLY have a website and it's your only marketing? Please don't tell me that or I'll go off on a "If you build it (and do nothing else) they will not come" rant.  :-D

Anyway, if you can't answer "yes" to all these questions, it's time for a website revamp. Contact your webmaster, or me if you'd like some help.

Is your website:

1. Easy to use?
   For the VIEWER. Think about how you sometimes go to a website and there are all kinds of things to trip over, that slow you down, confuse you, and make it a trial just to find what you're looking for. Don't do that to your clients and customers. Seriously. Confused and frustrated people will disappear faster than a wet cat.
2. Readable?
   If your company only sells to people under 30 with 20/20 vision, go ahead and use small, scrunched-up type in pale colors and clutter up your site with lots of distracting flashy stuff and heart-pounding background music. No so much?  Make sure YOU can read your website without your glasses. Can others who are older or who don't have perfect vision read it easily?
3. Organized so people can get to the info they want, fast?
   It takes time to work out a structure for your site that will make it easy for people to find what they need. Take the time, it's worth it. Once people get mired in a maze of click here, click there, and don't know where they are, you'll lose them waaaayyy before they take out their wallet or contact you.
4. Fun to look at and use?
   Fun doesn't mean loaded up with flash, music and migraine-inducing colors. Fun means easy-to-use with enjoyable graphics and colors that support your brand, interesting well-written copy, and pages short enough so they don't have to scroll for days.
5. Set up so that viewers want to move forward and buy or inquire?
   Your website should help move the viewer through the info and to the point where they contact you or buy something.  
6. SEO-friendly?
   There's a lot that can be built into your site to make it friendly to search engines. After that, there are lots of things that can be done by a competent "white hat" SEO specialist to keep you up there in the search engine results. Good SEO is an ongoing process, NOT a do-it-once-and-forget-about-it kinda thing.
7. Updated regularly to keep it fresh?
   Stale and outdated content makes you look unprofesional or even out of business. Keep it updated, at least four times a year. Plus, the search engines will like you better for it.
8. Working with your other marketing efforts?
   Are your other marketing efforts being used to drive people to your website? Like, your website on your business cards, brochure, postcards, PowerPoint presentations, all kinds of presentations, banners, posters, you know what I mean.
9. Working with your social media efforts?
   Is your website helping people find you on social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook? Are your social media efforts bringing people to your website? 
10. Easy for people to contact you?
    As in, they have multiple ways to contact you and can find that info on every page without heading over to the "Contact" page.
11. Making your work, artwork, products/services look stellar?
    This one drives me nuts. People spend good money on a website, or hours of their own time, and then use crappy images of their work. Why? I wish I knew. That image may be the only time they see your work before they buy. If you can't take professional-quality photos, pay a pro to do it. Your business is worth it.
12. Set up to load quickly?
    Some websites are so heavy with large image files and junk that it takes a l-o-n-g time for everything to load onto the screen.  Ugh!  Images for web are differenet (and much smaller) than images used elsewhere. Learn the difference or get help.
13. Easy and fast to update?
    Websites are like pets and kids. You think they're expensive to get, and then you find out what it costs to KEEP them. Make sure yours is designed to be updated by you or your webmaster quickly and easily. Oh, also, maybe you want a webmaster that doesn't charge over $100/hr by the half hour when all you need is small changes now and then. I'm just sayin...
14. Making you look professional?
    Again, it's about the VIEWER and what they want to see and how they want to see it. NOT what you decide they should see. Really. Check your website stats to find out which pages attract and hold people there.  Also, please save anything not directly related to your business for your personal blog or other website. When in doubt, stop and ask yourself, "Does adding this to my website support my business marketing efforts, or does it degrade/dilute my efforts and make me look silly and unprofessional?"

Hope this helps!  As always, all my best to you and yours.