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Webmasters and the New Year
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By Lois S.
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Webmasters and the New Year
It's a time of year when people think about goals for thefuture. As webmasters of revenue-generating websites, we havethese goals in common:
- Attract more visitors to our sites - Convert more visitors tocustomers - Keep those customers coming back
What worked last year or the year before might be lesssuccessful this year. The playing field changes, and the rulesof the game can also change. What should we be looking at for2006?
Attracting more visitors to our sites
First, take a look at how well your site is doing.
- Are you targeting keyword phrases that people are searchingfor these days? - Have you studied what your competitors aredoing recently? - How many inbound links from quality, relatedsites do you currently have? - Has your SERP or Google PRchanged?
With some do-it-yourself search optimization toolshttp://articles.websitesource.com/seo_do_it_yourself_8_16_2005.shtml, you can check your site's position in search engines, viewits current Google PR, see what words your competitors' sitesare optimized for, find out where your site is ranked for searchterms, analyze inbound links to competitors' sites, and more.Your site may have been the "it" site for your product orservice a couple of years ago, but if you haven't at least keptup with your competitors, potential customers might not make itto your site.
Acquiring inbound links is an ongoing job. If you haven't workedon this aspect of SEO recently, some newer sites are probablygood candidates for a link exchange or one-way links to yoursite. Start by looking at who's linking to your competitors'sites, and look for other sites with related but not competingcontent.
Also consider the geographical areas you're targeting. Toattract more local visitors, get your site listed in localdirectories and put the name of your city and country in the<title> tag, at least for the Contact page. To attractmore international customers, look for listings in internationaldirectories, and offer pricing in more than one currency ifpossible.
Converting more visitors to customers
You've got people coming to your site. Are they buying from you?If not, why not?
Try to look at your site with fresh eyes. Better yet, getsomeone else to. Do the colors and design look dated? Does thepage look good in newer, larger monitors as well as smallerones? An updated design may be what your site needs to keep itlooking like a quality contender in your field.
Analyze your traffic stats. If you have a lot of visitors whodon't click beyond the landing page, either you aren't targetingthe right visitors or they aren't drawn in once they arrive. Onthe other hand, if your visitors typically view a number ofpages and then leave, perhaps the path of information and actionisn't clear enough. Or there may be another problem with yoursite that's turning people off.
Of course, the above must be compared with the number ofreturning visitors. Consumers typically visit a site about threetimes before buying.
Follow the path from arriving at the site — on any page— to reading about a product or service, finding moreinformation, and placing an order. Is the path easy to follow?Do all the links work? If you have another person looking atyour site, watch that person's eye movement, observe if anypauses suggest confusion, and listen to the commentary andquestions.
Check that the content is current. If you still advertise aspecial that expired two months ago, for example, it looks likeno one is attending to the business.
Do you offer as many payment options as possible? Perhaps youcouldn't afford a merchant account to accept credit cardpayments when you were starting out, but you can now. Ifvisitors often get to the point of sale and then leave, a lackof payment choices that suit them may be the reason.
Keeping customers coming back
Think about your successes over the past year. What products orservices were the most popular? How did people find out aboutthem? What positive feedback did you receive? Use all of thatinformation to make your strengths even better.
If you received any negative feedback, look at it as anopportunity to improve your service or product line.
An opt-in mailing list or newsletter is a low-cost, effectiveway to keep your company name in your customers' minds. Duringthe order process, provide a check box for customers to chooseif they want to receive mailings from you. If they choose yes,you have their permission to send them information aboutspecials, new products, and other news.
People online are becoming increasingly annoyed by spam andaware of privacy issues. Your website should include a privacypolicy, and your mailings should include a link for recipientsto unsubscribe if they want to. Don't send out regular mailingsmore than once a month, and provide information that's useful tothe recipients.
Content 2006-style
Regular new, quality content attracts more visitors to your siteand provides a reason to come back. Once thought of as a fad forpersonal sites, increasingly more businesses are adding blogs totheir websites. Blogs provide a less formal medium to conveyinformation, people can subscribe to them and be notified whenthey have new content, and they keep search engine spiderscoming back whenever you add new content. With thousands of newblogs starting up every day, blogs are the wave of the future.
In this blog, we'll be discussing what's new and useful forwebmasters and for people who spend a lot of time online. Weinvite you to stay tuned.
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