How Does Your Website Rank? In the digital age your website is your most important marketing tool. For most business owners, it is the cheapest and most effective way to attract new business and increase sales. A lot of business owners treat their website as an electronic billboard that simply lists the who, what and where of the business, however, the primary purpose of your website is to attract more leads and generate more revenue. It’s your silent sales person working 24/7 yet less than two percent of businesses have websites that really deliver. How Does Your Website Compare? There are a number of key performance indicators for websites including ‘unique visits’ which tells you how many people have visited your website and the ‘bounce rate’ that indicates how many visitors click through to more than one page, which might suggest a more meaningful visit as distinct from a casual visitor. Of course, the ultimate indicator is a ‘conversion’ where the visitor actually makes a purchase from you via your shopping cart, email or phone order. To measure the effectiveness of your website, we have put together the table below that lets you keep ‘score’ on your website’s features and functionality. As it is normally quite difficult to assess your own work, you might persuade a colleague or associate to go through the exercise with you. 1 Design Visitors will pass judgement on your website within seconds and while the cosmetics aren’t the number one factor, they count. To get a comparative benchmark, visit the websites of several of your major competitors and compare the visual appeal and ease of navigation. Rate your website out of 10 for this feature. /10 2 Search Position Conduct a Google Search for your industry type in your suburb (e.g. Plumber Richmond). Give yourself 10 marks for Number 1 position through to 1 mark for the tenth position. Do the same for your line of business without a location (e.g. Plumber). Number 1 position in the rankings earns you 15 points through to Number 15 position which gives you 1 point. /10 /15 3 Content Again, comparing your website to your competitors, how does the quality and volume of content stack up (text, videos, graphics and images)? Consider how persuasive and professional the writing is and how professional and appealing the graphics and photos are. Give your website a score out of 15 for this feature. /15 4 Upselling and Cross-Selling How well does your website promote other related products and services with a view to increasing the sale? Give your website a score out of 5 for this feature. /5 5 Calls to Action Does your website entice visitors to take decisive action with ‘calls to action’ such as ‘Click Here to Order’, ‘Sign Up Now’, ‘Get Instant Access’ and ‘Subscribe Now’ etc. Give your website a score out of 5 for this feature. /5 6 Responsiveness Is your website mobile and tablet friendly so it automatically reformats to fit the screen size? Increasingly, your customers and clients are using mobile devices to conduct searches and their business online. Give your website a score out of 10 for this function. /10 7 Ease of maintenance Your website’s Content Management System (CMS) should allow you or your staff to make changes to your website without the need to contact the website developer or designer. Score out of 10 for this feature. /10 8 Close the Sale Does your website move visitors closer to a sale? For example, do you offer eCommerce facilities (like a shopping cart) or offer a form asking for details for you to supply a quote on? Score out of 10 for this feature. /10 9 Build a List of Prospects One of the primary purposes of your website should be to capture visitor contact details to allow follow-up communications or to send them ongoing offers. Give your website a score out of 10 for this feature. /10 TOTAL (FROM A POSSIBLE 100) /100 Results guide: You need to look at your website as an investment, not a cost. Based on the score you achieved this is what your results mean: If you scored 85-100 – Congratulations. It sounds like you have a quality website that should be delivering lots of new customers/clients and providing an excellent return on your investment 70-84 – Very Good and your website should be providing a sound return on your investment but may need work on aspects that didn’t score so well. 50-69 – Pass, but plenty of room for improvement and you may need to be working on converting visitors to leads and sales. Below 50 – Fail. Your website is likely to be losing traffic to your competitors and providing a poor return on your investment. Take action on low-scoring categories as soon as possible! Lead generation is the lifeblood of any business and marketing can be the difference between a good business and a great business. If you need any assistance with your branding, video production, responsive website design or search engine optimisation, call us today and let’s get to work on your business so it’s more profitable, valuable and saleable. Book Corner—Good To Great by Jim Collins Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don’t by Jim Collins (Random House publisher) Why Read It? Collins’ book is chock-a-block full of case studies, analogies and simple but profound principles. Well-researched and well-written, this book contains some powerful insights along with a few more obvious points along the way. Overall, a must-read for both those that work at a company that has the potential to be something great, or if you have a vision of a company you would like to build. What you will learn – how good, mediocre or even bad companies can achieve enduring greatness through great leadership. Great leaders deal in reality without pretence. They get the right people on board from the outset. Find your outstanding, truly awesome talent and the business plan will … Continue reading On The Money