Would you engage with a website that looks like it was built in 2007 with incoherent writing and images that contradict the key services?
Probably not.
And while bad websites aren’t always that obvious, a bad website will always, to a degree, be damaging to your brand and your profit margin.
A well crafted, strategic website could be the hurdle your business needs to cross to make sales and engagement boom.
It can be hard to differentiate between a website that looks good and a website that looks good and works well.
To help you determine where your website sits on the scale of effective to blah, we’ve created this super comprehensive checklist detailing all of the elements proven to make your website your number one sales rep.
Quality
[ ] Writing
[ ] Links
[ ] Photos
Your website could be doing everything we have listed right and it wouldn’t mean a thing if the production quality is poor.
Pages full of writing detailing your brand’s purpose and services are useless if the copy could be likened to the stylings of a blind monkey on a typewriter.
All the writing could be crafted to perfection and it would be irrelevant if all of the pages hosting the wiring were only accessible via broken website links and a confusing linking narrative.
Your website could be functioning at an optimal level with words more moving than ‘I have a dream’ but if the accompanying images are blurry, pixelated or more dated than Justin Timberlake’s iced tips then your brand is unlikely to look professional and appealing to your target market.
Branding
[ ] Logo
[ ] Page-to-Page Synergy
Without a logo and brand-specific colour scheme, it’s difficult to make your brand stand apart from competitors and be attractive to consumers.
Your individual branding should play a major role across every page of your website. Your website shouldn’t look like its built from a one-size-fits-all template, with stock images and miss-matched fonts, colours and icons that look like they were ripped from the first page of Google.
A lack of design cohesion can make your brand look cheap and sub-par to competitors. Your website is your online presence, your equivalent of a digital brick and mortar. It should be visually merchandised and in uniform front to back, page by page and across all of your brand’s digital and print footprints.
Content
Content[ ] Engaging
[ ] Valuable
[ ] Informative
[ ] Easy to Understand
Website content isn’t just about being informative. In the competitive digital market space we operate in, a shopping list of features is rarely going to sell a service or product.
Your content should excite and engage everyone who happens across it. Your written components should speak directly to your target market making them feel like you understand them and their needs, and what to benefit their lives with the features of your product- not just make a quick buck.
The writing on your website should act as a tour guide for those who want to learn about your brand. It should educate through valuable information that is presented in an easy to understand way.
Strategy
[ ] Search Engine Optimised
[ ] Call To Action
[ ] Navigation
[ ] Responsive Design
[ ] Mobile Friendly
Your website is your 24/7 salesperson. And as your most rostered on salesperson your website has to be equipped to not only greet and inform your customers, retain and attract leads and most importantly close the sale.
It’s not just about pretty words and pretty pictures. Your website needs to go to work every single day to get your brand noticed via strategic keyword placement on Search Engine Optimised pages and solid internal link pathways.
A strong call to action on every page is the cherry on top to a productive, useful website. Your call to actions should help to drive sales home and pick up new leads. The entire site should be mobile friendly and responsive so that it responds to every users’ behaviour as they navigate through your products and services.
You made it to the end of the checklist. How did you go?
If you ticked some or most of the above then you probably have the basics of a good website down pact. However, if you’re ready to truly unleash the power of your website then you’ve come to the right place. Contact Red Herring Digital to maximise your online potential today.