Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Web Design - 6 Critical Elements Your Small Business Website Must Have to Survive

A great number of small businesses have Fine Beef website because everyone else does. Keeping up with the crowd if you like. If this is the reason that you have a website then there is a very good chance that your website is not performing as well as you would like. There is even a very good chance that your website has not been updated in a while. So, what are the 6 key elements to getting your website to perform?

The first thing that you must have on your website is great content. People search the internet for information, so you must ensure that your website contains great information relating to your business sector or niche. Google will reward you with a better ranking for having lots of great content on your site. You probably already have access to lots of great content about your business. Nobody knows your business better than you. A number of articles of 500 to 1000 words about various elements of your business will really give your site a boost. You may also choose to outsource this element of your site to a ghost writer to create content for you.

A Blog is a great way to give you site a boost. Blogging is not just for consolidate school loan A blog helps to create a community around your website. People refinancing contribute their ideas to your blog making them feel a part of your business. A blog is also a great way to contribute new content to your site. Google will reward you for this new content with a better ranking. There are a number of free blogs available that can be easily incorporated into your site.

Video is a key element for any website. Videos on your site let you interact with your visitors at a more personal level. The internet is often a faceless medium coming out of a computer screen. As a result of this Herculoids tend to be a little more wary dealing with a business they do not know over the internet and it can take a number of interactions to establish trust before people will purchase from your site. One way to overcome this is a video message on your site to indicate that there are real people involved in your business. Video is also a very effective means of teaching people how to do things and sharing high quality information on the internet. This also helps with the credibility of your website.

Email capture is vital for your website. It can take time to establish trust and credibility with your site visitors. If you have a site that sells product people will often not buy from you until they have visited your site a number of times. Give away a free report or a free subscription to your newsletter in order to get them to leave their email address with you. This way you can keep in contact with them on a regular basis in order to establish trust and credibility and to keep them coming back to your site.

Business details are vital to give you credibility. Your physical location, a phone number, details of the real human beings involved in your business are important, and often overlooked elements of your site. If all your customers can find is a web page and an email address then it will take longer to establish credibility with them.

The layout of your site is vital for keeping people involved. Is your site easy to navigate? If you are selling product, how easy is it to find the product that you are selling? If your visitors are leaving your site quickly then there is a very good chance that your layout is not engaging them or it is too difficult to navigate. Your layout should be clean and easy to follow. Many sites have too many widgets and gadgets and are too busy, and so people leave because they do not know what to look at next.

So, out of a score of 6, how is your site currently performing? Great content or needs improving? A blog so that people can get involved in your site? Video? Email capture by giving away a free report or newsletter subscription? Physical business details to establish credibility? Layout?

Is your website meeting your needs?

Stephen is the founder of www.webdesigntipsonline.com">www.webdesigntipsonline.com - The site is dedicated to helping individuals and small businesses improve the performance of their websites or establish themselves on the web for the first time. www.webdesigntipsonline.com">www.webdesigntipsonline.com covers a range of topics from CSS, to search engine optimisation, to hosting, and also conducts reviews of existing internet sites.