Website Checklist.
How well is your site doing what it's supposed to do?
Andy Clark 26.7.22
Think of the internet as one big digital high street, that anyone can visit whenever they wish and your website as your digital shop front. A place where passers-by can quickly discover if you offer what they are looking for, how much it might cost them, who you are, and what you stand for. Then, if they like what they find, they might put you on their list of options for when the time is right.
This leads to the question, is it time for a digital shopfit?
The old catalogue website is fine if people just want to look up your phone number and opening times, but if you want to attract new customers, your pages must offer more.
Think of the websites that you have recently visited and lingered on. You will almost certainly see that these sites
- Grab your attention quickly.
- Rely more on video and images, more than words to grab your attention.
- Show people like you happily using their products.
- Offer you something that only they can deliver.
- Engage you in a process that takes you further down the same page.
- Call you to action in some way.
A little time spent on Google will tell you what people are actually searching for when they think "I need an optician" and it’s rarely what you would think of putting as the headline of your site.
To rewrite your page, you must think like a browser not an optician; think about what people are looking for and show them exactly why your offering is their best option to get it. Make your visitor, not you, the focus of the story. To make this work properly, apply SIDS rules to your digital customer journey.
SIDS
S – Stop
Turn a glance into a stare.
Just as your shopfront must stop people walking past your door in favour of a competitor, your website must stop them hitting the back button and looking elsewhere, and according to Google, you have less than 1 second before they do just that if they don’t like what they see.
I – Invite
An inviting practice encourages people to walk in and meet your team, browse the frames and consider their options, an inviting website encourages people to do exactly the same but with copy, pictures and video.
D – Discover
Your website and your practice should lead people along a trail of discovery where they can find out how well you will deliver what they are looking for, what you are like and what you stand for.
S – Sign Up
They move to the next step towards becoming a customer.
Driving traffic to your site.
Create landing pages that reflect the topics that people will be interested in when they search.
Never send people to your home page, send them to a landing page relevant to their search.
Split test and improve your landing pages.
Check List
25 questions to challenge how well your site will work when somebody pays it a visit.
- Does it use my brand rules?
- If I changed the name and branding, could a competitor use it?
- Are my points of difference clearly demonstrated?
- Are my core marketing messages easily found?
- Are my current marketing campaigns featured?
- Is the navigation easy to follow?
- Is this site mobile friendly?
- Are my contact details at the bottom of every page?
- Am I making the best use of my sidebar?
- Can I make it more human?
- Have I featured social media like boxes?
- Am I adding a new blog every week?
For Each Page Ask...
- Does this page appeal to a specific area of customer interest?
- Does this page tell a story that a customer will find appealing?
- Does this page use language that a customer will understand?
- Does this page deliver what the browser is looking for?
- Does this page have an attention-grabbing headline?
- Does this page have images that support the headline?
- Does this page offer a video?
- Does this page convince the browser that we are the best option?
- Does this page confuse the browser?
- Does this page offer reasons to believe?
- Does this page offer confidence builders?
- Does this page answer the likely FAQs?
- Does this page offer an option to sign up to something?
- Does this page have a call to action?
Google Adwords
- Get quality clicks.
- Use location and radius targeting.
- Don’t use keyword groups of less than 3 words.
- Lots of campaigns with a single keyword group will always outperform a few campaigns with lots of keywords.
- The keywords save you money, use exact matches.
- Add extensions to make your adds stand out and tell google you are more relevant.
- Concentrate on CTR - click through rate not clicks.
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