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What makes a good web site
We will continue our brief analysis that we started on the previous article about what makes a good website. As promised, I will share with you my thoughts about what you need to take into consideration when you analyze the quality of a web site.
Let’s concentrate on YOUR website, for now. It looks great, colorful, holds tons of information. You might have even stepped a little further and had someone do search engine optimization on your website. Or even further more and you’ve started a search engine marketing campaign (Google Ad Words, Yahoo Search Marketing – former Overture, or Microsoft Ad Center). So you think you have a rocking website and you lean back chuckling. THINK AGAIN!
Let’s have a better look on all those three aspects that I’ve just mentioned above:
- Just the fact that the website looks nice doesn’t make it a successful one. Are the pictures and branding elements (colors, logo, etc) consistently used across the website? I hope you didn’t mixed amateur pictures with professional ones and that you have used the same navigational pattern for all areas on your website. Your web site visitors should not get confused and start thinking they landed on a different website when they clicked on a menu that drove them into a different chapter within the same website. Just remember: it’s not the color only that makes a good painting, and we are all able to recognize a Picasso or a Vermeer when we happen to see one (OK, maybe not all of us!)
- It doesn’t matter if you did a search engine optimization, if you didn’t start with identifying THE BEST KEYWORDS for your website. What are the best keywords? Those that better describe your business? No! Those that people are searching for most often? You are getting closer, but the answer is still: No! You’ve probably confused already so let me tell you what I think the best keywords for you would be: those words from your business field that people search for and the competition for them is not that fiercefull. Imagine how much effort you need to put into optimizing your website for a keyword that people are searching for but there are already hundreds of thousands or even millions of websites. You would spend so much effort just to increase your rankings a little but still be placed far behind. It would be much better to concentrate on other keywords that people are still searching for but you have better chances to place your website on the first results page. Don’t fight wars that you cannot win, even if the reward would be great. Oh, if you are willing to put thousands of dollars into it, then you better forget what I’ve just said…
- The search engine marketing campaign might prove itself very helpful but you have to make sure it does NOT ONLY drive traffic to your website. You need to get QUALIFIED TRAFFIC! That means, it’s better to get 200 people on your website that are really interested in your offer and convert 30% of them into customers than have a thousand visitors that landed on your website looking for something else and getting only 3% of them to actually buy something from you. You’ve spent five times more to get the traffic but the conversion rate is only half. Or, if you think of it the other way: if you do things smart, you can get double the number of customers paying five times less to get them, compared with someone that’s not as smart as you!
To summarize, I would say a better website is not the one that tailors itself on the business it supports, but one that tailors itself on the thinking patterns of the potential customers, and tries to smartly get engaged only in those “wars” it has a good chance to win. Until next time… go out there and make real money with your website!
Antonel Neculai
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