Is It Time You Upgraded Your Website?

by Marc Lee

There are lots of websites that begin with a tight budget. Sometimes businesses believe they can't afford all the special features that make a good website excellent. Sometimes they just don't know about them.

Basic but essential website upgrades that improve your web presence are inexpensive. They will, attract new customers, and bring existing customers back for more.

For a quick check on whether your website is competitive, ask yourself these five questions:

1. Do you have a "What's New" section?

The Web thrives on the new. But how many sites have you seen that are stuck in their original offerings? Businesses don't run the same newspaper ad month after month, year after year. Why do it on the web?

If you have a regularly updated "What's New" section on your site, you won't need a full site makeover as soon.

Treat your site like a newspaper. Put the "news" on the front page. Make it easy to find. You don't have to be as irritating as America On Line, offering a new sales opportunity every time a visitor logs on.

Try a "Monthly Special." It won't take a lot of energy to update and you'll be surprised at the difference it can make! For some good ideas, look at Amazon.com where new specials are offered daily. Or try www.pcconnection.com which features an array of specials on their first page!

2. Can visitors find everything easily?

Don't make it difficult for users to find what they need on your site! It's too easy for them to leave and look elsewhere.

When your site started out it may have been small enough that there was no need for a site map. But as sites grow, site maps become essential. The most lavish approach to a site map that we've seen is at the Web firm Blair Lake (www.blairlake.com).

All you need is a clear, simple outline format with links to the different pages of your site.

Don't confuse site maps with search options. If your site has fewer than 50 different pages, stick with the site map. It's not until you hit 100 pages that your website definitely needs the more expensive search feature that will review the content of each indivdual page.

3. What kind of feedback opportunities do you offer?

Notice the plural -- Opportunities. One is not enough. You need to have as many different feedback opportunities as there are people and reasons for a customer to contact you. Often it helps to have a small feedback link on every page.

The Internet, like the telephone, cries out to be a two way information highway. Lots of sites offer a basic "mail to" link that will open the user's email program. I find this particularly unsatisfactory for a couple of reasons.

First, it requires that I reveal my email address, usually without any guarantee of privacy.

Second, this communication function may not be installed, or it may be disabled on the user's browser. That renders the email link useless.

Forms are the feedback mechanism that savvy website designers use to enable the customer to communicate with you. With forms you give your customers control over what information they choose to disclose.

Few businesses are completely virtual, like Amazon.com, where the relationship is entirely Internet based. For many Internet businesses, forms are designed to be a first contact with a customer, something that leads to a voice-to-voice or face-to-face relationship.

Whenever this is the case, don't ask for information online that you can get in a subsequent contact. Whenever you do get an email address from a prospective customer, be sure there is an automatic email reply first, and then any appropriate follow-up after.

4. Do you provide security information and a Privacy Policy?

The biggest hurdle to doing business on the web is establishing trust.

Many of us have been burned by having our email address used inappropriately. We've all wondered if it's really safe to use our credit card online.

Verify that your Internet Service Provider has taken appropriate security measures to secure online transactions, and then go the next steps.

Promise people that you will never never ever give their email address to anyone else.

Give people a choice about what information to disclose, and don't ask for information you don't really need. Remember, the more you ask for, the less you will get.

Guarantee people that you will pay the $50 in charges for which they are responsible should the use of their credit card on your site result in any unauthorized charges.

Publish those guarantees and promises clearly on your website, both at the point of use and in a Security and Privacy Policy statement on its own page. A good example of a Privacy Pledge is at eToys (www3.etoys.com/shopping/etoys/html/privpledge.shtml). It reads "eToys will never sell or share your personal information with any other third party unless we have your explicit permission to do so."

5. Is yours a faceless, locationless cyber-business?

Websites are branches of businesses that exist in the real world! Don't make it hard for your customer to call or write you. Publish the company's address and phone number in a prominent place. And, if you are actively seeking that personal contact, publish contact information on every page.

Post driving directions and a map online so that people know where and how to find you.

Give faces to the people your customers may contact by posting their photos on your site. People like to know who they are dealing with. Think about the different between formal photographs and casual (but good) photos taken in the work place and what that might say about your customer relations.

For more information or web site assistance contact Marc Lee at 785.832.2299

Copyright © 2002 by Marc Lee, Affinity Web Design.

http://www.AffinityWebDesign.com/