As a business owner you certainly wouldn't accept an employee that was rude, slow, and generally inefficient.



Surprisingly, many employers have no problem when their website performs similarly. Unfortunately these problem “employee” websites are found far too often which is sad since a well performing site takes little more effort than one that doesn't.

A good site doesn't necessarily have to be large or elaborate either. The copywriting rule of thumb applies perfectly to a website, that being, say enough to make the sale, not more or less. Here are a few more important tips:

If you offer contact via phone, make your number easy to find. People like being able to reach a live person. Make it easy for them to do so.

Post a video. It's almost becoming a necessity at this point to keep up with the current trend of giving a multimedia message to your visitor. They expect it, so deliver it to them.

Keep your message focused. This includes de-cluttering your website. If there is something on there that doesn't lead directly to the sale, get rid of it. Focus on the customer, not on wild or complex sites that strive for creativity. Make it easy for your customer to find the solution to their needs.

Move to eliminate things that distract or delay the customer. One common offense here is the Flash splash page. These things just delay the real message you need to deliver, and no longer have the wow factor that they once had. A far better use would be to have a video has previous mentioned.

It's critical these days for your web page to look good in multiple browsers. Without checking, you might be very surprised as to how different it may look. Although Internet Explorer is widely used, a large percentage of people use other browsers as well. Would you want to shop in a cluttered, disorganized store with amateurish looking signs? Of course not, nor can you expect the same from a website. The bar is so much higher now than it was just five years ago.

Another common problem is readability in terms of font design, contrast and size. Again avoid the artsy look and stick with high contrast colors and standard fonts.

Although high speed internet is becoming more common, do take care to keep the page load times reasonable. One way to do this is make sure any graphics are reformatted to be optimized for the web. Note that pictures from your digital camera are not automatically optimized and can result in very slow page loading times.

Analyzing the performance of your website is important to know where the strengths and weaknesses are. There are free analytics that will allow you to track where the visitor comes from, how long they stay on your site and what paths they take when going through your site.

Ultimately your site needs traffic and that means being listed on Google and Yahoo. Getting there involves not only the right web design with the right key words on your site, but getting links to your site from other sites.