Newsletter #114 Revamp Your Website in Four Easy Steps

Created on 20/06/07

A special hello to all new subscribers. This article is on the Web at this address.

Our last newsletter (28th May, 2007) was "So What is Web 2.0?".

Feature Article

OK your Website needs a revamp, it’s looking a little tired and much of the content is out of date. However before you charge into it why don’t you sit back and think about how this revamp can add value to your business? We think there are four main elements to a successful revamp:

What’s The Strategy?

How is your Website going to add to your bottom line and what are you trying to achieve? Your Website is a great way of marketing your services or products and of course can be used to sell them as well. But also it can be used as a resource and/or interface with existing customers thereby improving retention and reducing communication costs.

Setup some KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) so you can measure things like: The number of quotation requests per month, goods sold or percentage of customers using the online interface. Then track them over time.

Think Like a Customer

When revamping you need to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. What information are they looking for to help make a purchase decision? How can you make life easier for existing customers? Think about the key paths you would like your customers to take through your Website and design your site to make those paths very obvious.

In the world of Web 2.0, user-created content is a hot trend. How can you use your community to build a newsletter or make your products or services better? Check out the new ways that companies are using the Web: blogging, podcasting, SMS messaging and using social sites like MySpace and YouTube. Are any of these a good fit?

Make it Usable

There’s no point revamping your site so it has all the “bells and whistles” if visitors have trouble using it. Straightforward navigational elements are best, especially for older visitors - Google likes it simple too.

Don’t overdo the graphics, remember they take longer to download, and unless they are providing information, visitors will barely look at them. However, long-winded text is perhaps even worse; Web users mainly scan and may dismiss your content if it is too hard to sift the essential elements from it.

Marketing

If you don’t tell people about its new features and great information then you've wasted your time. Make a bit of a fuss if you do a major overhaul, tell your customers, write a Press Release and send it to local/national papers, industry associations and industry magazines.

Search Engine optimisation should be taken into account during your site design to get the best results. Make sure your partners link to your site in the correct way to give your Google ranking a boost and seek out other opportunities to get inbound links to your site via directories and other related companies. Make sure any business and industry-related directories have your up to date information.

Check out Google AdWords for extra traffic to your site.

There are a lot more elements involved in completing a successful revamp, but if you think about the four main issues above, you will be well on the way.

Hot Tips

Newbies

The second part of getting email organised (see Newsletter 113 for the first part) is to develop rules so that email goes automatically in the right folder. In Outlook Express go Tools/Message Rules/Mail then click New. Select the Conditions for your rule. eg "Where the From line contains people" then Select the Actions for your rule. eg "Move it to the specified folder". In Rule Description click on the underlined value to edit it - a new box will open for each option. Once finish click OK. Give the rule a meaningful name. Then click OK.
In Outlook 2003 go Tools/Rules and Alerts/Email Rules/New Rule and follow the Rules Wizard.

Power Users

If you're an Office 2003 user you might not know that Office 2007 works in XML formats:.docx for Word, .xlsx for Excel and .pptx for PowerPoint. To be able to open, edit and save documents in this format you need to download Microsoft's Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007. To find this pack go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads or search for FileFormatConverters.exe on the Microsoft site.

Interesting Sites

Blinkx is a video search engine that has over 12 million hours of searchable video. It also has more than 130 media partnerships from media companies around the world ensuring that there is a great deal of news video on the site. http://www.blinkx.com/

InsiteFul Quotes

"Chaos Theory is a new theory invented by scientists panicked by the thought that the public were beginning to understand the old ones." Mike Barfield.

You can see our other Quick Quotes on the front page of www.netinsites.com; just refresh the page to see another one randomly selected from our database. Great for presentations or times when you want to appear to be a techno-dude(ss)!

Archives

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Best wishes

Alex Garden

Internet Strategy | Website Design | Website Promotion | Web Text Messaging | Email Newsletters | Online Sports Games | Content Management