Last week, we added Taking Your Website to the Next Level to the Sales & Marketing Best Practices exchange. Since there is a lot of very useful information in this article, I thought I would share some highlights. Below is an excerpt from the article on “Branding Do’s and Don’ts”……
Your website will communicate information about you and the products or services you offer. Your “brand” is your company’s identity (company name, logo, slogan, etc.) and more importantly, the qualities people associate with it. Your website says a lot about your brand, and not just via the messaging on your site. The way your website looks and how people experience it say a lot about your brand and your company too.
Best Practices Recommendations:
| Practice | Implications |
| Thoroughly check for misspellings and broken links. | An error-ridden website is a bad thing. Unfortunately, it can create the impression that you are just as careless creating your products or delivering your service. |
| Invest in a nice website design | You want to make a good first impression on visitors. Nicely polished website designs can be created easily and inexpensively (more on this later). Under-investing in design can put you at a disadvantage; especially if your competitors’ sites look more polished. |
| Review competitors’ sites | Compare your site to your competitors on a regular basis. Study key messages, special offers, look and feel, etc. Make sure you’re keep pace, AND look for ways to one-up them. For example, is your messaging similar? If so, then consider adding customer testimonials, or a pricing info or maybe use video or audio to communicate. |
| Make it easy to find and get info or resources | The Internet has transformed the way people shop for Business-to-consumer (B2C) and Business-to-business (B2B) products and services. They often expect to be able to educate themselves on your offerings, and if they like what they see, then they will continue the purchasing process. So, make self-education easy for the user. |
| Be mindful of dated content | If you have brochures with publication dates on your site, update the publication content and dates from time to time, so they seem current. If you have press releases with datelines or dated announcements on your site, be sure to keep more news coming out, or remove the dated content. If the latest news on your website is over 6 months old, visitors may assume that there’s nothing going on at the company. Keep news up to date to create the impression that you’re business is lively. |
| No “under construction” signs | Better to publish a small, but complete site instead of a large site with lots of links to “under construction” dead ends. This can frustrate users and may lead them to believe that your website isn’t the only thing that’s not ready to do business. |
| Aren’t iPads cool? | Not if someone’s using one to view a website full of Flash video or Flex content; the browsers on the Apple mobile devices don’t display Adobe Flash. Keep mobile device access in mind; and make sure all those people browsing sites via devices experience your site in a positive way. |
