We specialize in quality business web design and I get requests regularly from businesses that would like me to look at their website and give an opinion on what I think. Sometimes I am quite surprised on what I find. I always will ask five questions before I check out the site.

Initial Questions

1. What is the purpose of the site?
2. What action do you want from a visitor?
3. What are you selling?
4. Who is your targeted customer?
5. Where do you want your traffic come from?

This is what I look for.

1. Initial Impression: Does the website have curb appeal for your targeted customer? Does it give the proper impression based on who your customer is? Obviously you want a very different look for a website about children’s motivation than for business services. Look at the website from the eyes of your customer.
2. Initial Message: Does your website convey the essential message in the first 3-5 seconds. If not, new visitors are gone in a click. This last week, I looked at a major restaurant supply website that had industry news and recipes on their home page. There was no mention of what services they provide or the advantages of using them.
3. Call to Action: Is there a clear path to action? This could be call now, buy online, request a quote or download this eBook. This should be clear from the home page. Is the navigation arranged in a logical selling process?
4. Traffic Source: If the website is expected to bring in traffic from search engines, I look for evidence of keywords being used in the body text, headings, link text, etc. I look for structural problems, and evidence that the website is using duplicate content or part of an auto-generated website such as some real estate or travel agent sites.

Effective  business website design needs to produce the results desired. This could be leads, sales or phone calls. If you are unsure about your website, please ask us for our opinion. Please reference this blog posting and let us know the answers to the initial questions above. Request a website analysis

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 6:25 am and is filed under Internet Marketing, Website Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.