site bytes

You’ve finally made the decision to get started with your website. Now you just have to come up with what you want to say – which often is not as easy as it sounds. A good place to start is with any existing brochures, postcards, letters or other sales material that youve already developed. If you’re starting at ground zero, here are some things you can do to pull your content together:

First, start with the facts. Who are you, where are you located, how do people contact you and what products or services do you provide? Those are the basics that must get onto your website.

Now stop and think: why you? Not in the dramatic, “woe is me” sense, but why should people want to work with you? Since small businesses usually don’t have the economies of scale to make them the lowest price seller, it’s all about what makes working with you unique. Don’t forget that good products and great customer service aren’t selling points, they’re expectations, so you need to think about what else differentiates you from the rest of the pack. Is it your craftsmanship? Your expertise? What makes you better able than the next guy to deliver a quality product or service? This is the information that should motivate your prospect into making a call or sending an email to you.

Next up: images. Images can have a powerful visual impact, but they also take time to load. Website visitors are impatient, so make sure that the photos you do have on your site are relevant and convey your business image or message. If you’re an artist or if manufacture a product, then people are going to want to see what you can do. If you sell a service, images can help break up the text and make your website more visually appealing. There are lots of places from which you can acquire inexpensive images. Here are just a few: shutterstock.com, istockphoto.com or dreamstime.com.

Still at a loss for words? Don’t try to compose it all at once – start by listing the facts and your differentiators. You can always take advantage of copy writing or editing services to help you bring it all together – and a good writer will take the time to learn a bit about you and your business before attempting to put pen to paper. Those lists will help them get started, too!

Ever been to a website that took forever to load? Or one that made you search through page after page just to find a phone number or an email address? How about a site that started playing music without giving you a choice – and while you were in your office or cubicle?!

Experiences like this can drive your traffic and potential customers away. Making your website user-friendly is well worth the thought and effort as you go about developing your site. Here are some quick tips to get the thought process going.

Users like websites that (are):

quick to load: You have about 5 to 7 seconds before your readers decide whether or not they want to stay on your site to find out more about you. Graphics and images add visual interest and appeal, but they take more time than text does to load, so make sure your images are optimized for your customers. If your target customer base lives in remote areas where only dial-up is available, keep your images to the absolute minimum and stick to well-designed type (text and fonts) to get your message across.

accommodate their style: Different customers have different styles of shopping or doing business. Many want to do everything online and if your business lends itself to that, enable your customers to serve themselves by providing enough information. Others prefer to speak to a live person. Make it easy for those buyers to contact you – put your phone number or email up on every page and where it can be found most easily.

easy to understand: You might be an expert on your industry, but chances are your customers aren’t. Make it easy for them to understand what you do or sell by using common terms rather than industry jargon.

easy to navigate: Give your site a consistent look and feel – put your navigation in the same place on every page and don’t get too cute with it. Those fly-out and drop down menus are slick, but if they require too much hand-eye coordination to select the right page or if they cover up other important information when they are opened up, you’ll risk sending away a potential customer.

understands their lack of time: As brilliant and on point as your writing is, don’t expect your customers to read every word of it to get your message. State your point in the first sentence. Use headings to direct customers to content they might find interesting.

to sum it up …

Look at your website from your customer’s viewpoint and you’ll stand a better chance at turning that prospect into a sale!