It's commonly accepted today that if you run a business, you need a website. One of the first things new customers do before picking up the phone to call any business is to search for more information about the company via the web. If your website is sending the right message, it will make a great first impression for you – even before you meet your client.
With this in mind, what is your website saying to your prospective customers? To answer this question, the key is viewing your site through the eyes of someone visiting it for the first time. To make an objective appraisal, consider the following.
20 Questions to Help Assess Your Website
Ultimately, when updating your website, your most important consideration should be to focus on the results you want. Ideally, you want more visitors, leads and customers. With this goal in mind, each change you implement will be focused on improving those results.
When assessing the effectiveness of your existing website, ask yourself the following questions.
Website Design & Navigation
1. Is it evident – on first glance – that your website has been designed by a professional?
2. Is your website design relevant to your prospective customers and does it give credibility to your business?
3. Is the site's branding consistent with your other marketing materials?
4. Has navigation been thought out? In other words, can visitors get to what they need in three clicks or less?
5. Do the colours and graphics used in the design enhance or overpower the content?
6. Does the design draw the visitor's eye to your most important messages?
Website Content
7. Does your home page immediately describe what you do using concise and simple terminology?
8. Have you broken up large areas of copy using focused, descriptive headlines and sub-headlines?
9. Are your paragraphs kept to a recommended 40–60 words for easy reading?
10. Are you using the right images to convey your message more dynamically?
11. Can you update your Web site content yourself?
Internet Marketing
12. Can you incorporate best practice search engine optimisation techniques, such as unique title tags on every page?
13. Is your content easily readable by search engine spiders?
14. Can visitors easily subscribe to your email newsletter from anywhere on your site?
15. Can your website accommodate important social media marketing elements – Facebook or YouTube, for example?
16. Can you measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts based on usable website activity reports?
User Experience
17. Do your web pages load quickly?
18. How does your website look on a mobile device?
19. Is your website compatible with various Internet browsers?
20. Have usability issues been considered? Have W3C standards been incorporated?
It's fair to say not all of the answers to these questions require a complete website re-design – but if, after carefully reviewing your website, you find that a lot of changes are necessary, it can sometimes be easier to start again from scratch.
However, before you start any re-development, identify your strengths (great content, keywords you rank for, inbound links to individual pages, conversion tools, etc.) and make sure measures are put in place to carry them across to your new website. If you need help improving your website, contact us.
