Is your website working for you or against you?

4 tips to make sure it helps grow your brand

Have you reviewed your website lately? How does it compare to some of the best? Check out the award winners at http://www.aimia.com.au/awards/winners

Are you checking Google Analytics regularly to see all the stats around your site? Get friendly with your website provider and make sure they are looking after your interests and keeping the backend of your website up to date with the latest versions. The operational aspects of a website can be very technical, so it’s good to have someone you can rely on to make sure it performs at its peak. Here are my four tips…

1. Is it generating leads for your email list?

Recent research identifies that having (and utilising correctly) a permission-based email list is the most valuable tool for building relationships with potential customers or referrers.

When someone lands on your website for the first time, you want them to have a good look around and return from time to time if they want what you have to offer. So give them something for free in return for their permission to email you with interesting information relevant to them.

Provide a white paper, a newsletter, a few chapters from your book or even a mini-book that they can download. Make it worth their while to give you their email address so you can keep in touch.

Don’t hide the subscribe button; in fact show it in multiple places. Draw the browser’s attention to it. Use popups.

Make sure you say up front that you won’t share, sell or spam them.

2. Does your personality shine through?

People like buying from people they like. So make sure your (hopefully pleasant) personality is on display on your website.

You can show this in many ways:
* in the way the content is written.
* by speaking directly to the website visitor (eg audio, podcast, etc.)
* by having a video.
* through a gallery of photos.

3. Does the website demonstrate the benefits to clients if they choose to use your products or services?

Include results that you have achieved for other clients and then explain how this helped their business.

In what way did your products assist the client or customer, can you provide measurable results?

4. Do you have genuine testimonials?

If not, make sure you put this at the top of your to-do list. It’s not hard to do, just requires a commitment to get it done.

They want to be short and explain one or two key attributes of your offering. When requesting a testimonial from a customer why not write a draft for them? Most of the time, they will agree with this or maybe add in or remove a few words here and there. This way, you can control what is said about the different aspects of your product/service and allow you to highlight every benefit that you offer.

If you do have a number of testimonials on your website, that’s great. But when was the last time you updated them? Could the page be refreshed? Perhaps show them in a different way? Add some more? Replace some?

If you haven’t used photos to go with the quotes, consider doing this as it adds a more human element and makes them more believable.

Also, it’s good to have the testimonial mention staff by name, which again adds a human element.

Consider doing video testimonials as these are more clickable than the text only alternatives, and visitors will generally watch to the end if it is kept to 60-90 seconds.

If your site is up there with the best, why not enter this year’s web awards? www.webawards.com.au

For more useful information to help your brand grow and shine, check out my new book, Brand Engagement, www.brandengagementpr.com.au (all profits donated to help the endangered Orange-bellied Parrot).