7 Keys to an Effective Website

7 Keys To Effective Websites For Small Businesses, Artists, Entrepreneurs, Job Seekers, Career Professionals and more..

1. Get a Website You Can Control
2. Start Talking to Google
3. Get Blogging
4. Help Customers Easily Contact You
5. Build a Following
6. Motivate Actions
7. Evaluate and Refine


1. Get a Website You Can Control

A lot of business owners who already have a website, often complain that they canʼt change their own website. They either don't have the power, access or skill to make changes and updates.

IMPORTANT! You should have the keys to your own website. The easiest way to get control of your website is with a content management system (CMS)--fancy web lingo for web-based software (Like Wordpress) that lets you easily manage and change your website. It gives you the power to do things like add new pages, upload photos, change text and more. If you can operate Microsoft Word, you can use most content management systems.

Now, with saying all this, some people simply donʼt want to mess with changing their own website. No worries! Just keep in mind that if you had your site built on a CMS system - when you hire someone to manage and update your website,  it will take them less time and save you money.

2. Start Talking to Google

Millions of people each day go to Google to find products, articles, photos, news and more. And some of those people are looking for the product or service you offer. So as a business owner with a product or service to sell—you want your website and business to be listed on the first page in Googleʼs search results.

Google uses mathematical algorithms to determine who gets ranked highly in their search results and itʼs based on a number of factors including keywords that appear on your site, links from other websites and other reasons.

You can boost where your site appears in search engine results by positioning your site
to take advantage of  a process called search engine optimization (SEO).  Content management systems organically are optimized and also have some great back end tools for you to manage your keywords and categories that help with site optimization.

3. Get Blogging

The simple power of blogging (posting news and articles to your website) is still going strong and it's something you can easily harness for your business.

Blogging is great for SEO - Google and all other search engines LOVE blogs!

Blogs make it EXTREMELY easy for you to optimize your site for SEO and the search engines. Why??? Because having a blog usually means frequently updated content, which means more for a search engine to find. It also tells the search engines that your website has new fresh information and is kept up to date! You never want to built a static website and leave it inactive

Blog Tips:

* Develop a Readership and Following Online
* Feed Your Blog Into Social Networks
* Teach and Share Your Expertise

Most blogs have a comment feature that invites readers to respond and share their opinion. That kind of open and public interaction can be scary, but it also opens the door to be more personal and connect with your customers. That personal connection can be a way to better answer customer questions, get ideas and feedback for improvement, and ultimately lead to more sales.

4. Help Customers Easily Contact You

Your website should make it easy for customers to get in touch with you.  Besides displaying your phone number, email address and preferred contact information -- you should also consider using online contact form or a "Live Chat" tool - so customers can reach you 24/7.   The best part about an online form is you can gather whatever information you need and direct it to whomever in your organization should be responding to it.

NOTE: Adding a simple contact form increased inquiries for most products and services dramatically. As a result, you can hone in your process for responding to those potential customers and turn them into paying clients.

5. Build a Following

As weʼve touched on, a blog is a great way to begin building readership and return visits to your website. But there are other ways to build a following through hot social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Make sure your website and social media profiles are connected! That's one of the easiest ways to build a following. You can and should also use the tried-and-true email newsletter. Put an opt-in subscription form on your site and offer special discounts, announcements and even free offers for your products.

IMPORTANT! Your website should be the 'main home base' ... 'the central clearinghouse'  for all these ways of connecting with your fans, your clients, your customers.... etc.

6. Motivate Actions

Business websites should not be static. They shouldn't just sit there, passively letting web surfers absorb information and move on. Your website should do something for your business.

Your site should be persuading potential customers to do whatever it is you want them to do.

Maybe you want them to contact you. Maybe it's clicking a 'buy it now' button on your site. Maybe it's printing off a coupon and coming to your store. Maybe it's spreading the word about your services. Simply put, your site needs to prompt call to action.

If your site has no call to action, then what's it doing?

And whatever action you want people to take, be sure your site steers them to that response easily and simply, with minimal effort needed from them. Because if they miss it, you're the one who misses out.

7. Evaluate and Refine

The best thing about the Internet is that just about anything can be tracked and by its very nature it's always changing. Those are two very big bonuses when it comes to a having a personal or business website on a CMS system. It means you can figure out what's working, what isn't and make changes to improve.

A free stat program like Google's Analytics is a good place to start. It lets you track keywords, what sites link to you and even the location of visitors to your site. You need to be tracking your website's stats so you can refine and improve the site and continue getting the results you want.

And if it's not working? Try something else. The ever-changing nature of the Internet means you can tweak and change your site until you find the magic combination that works.

Abridged: Webdesign.com