Keep your website in peak performance with this quick health check!

1 : Does your home page try too hard?

Have you noticed that many websites make it almost impossible to find what you’re looking for? The opening page is often a pretty but meaningless animated graphic. When you “skip the intro” you get to a page that has five news headlines, a dozen choices of buttons, text, product photos and a photo of the factory. Your attention is drawn to a dozen places at once – and all shout “me, me, me!”

The key to a good home page is focus. There should a single powerful marketing message – preferably your core competence or competitive edge – and it should get the lion’s share of your viewer’s attention.

Saying everything to everyone on a single home page is clearly impossible. Branding is about establishing your relevance in your viewer’s mind. You will probably have to target just 1-2 key market sectors or products on the home page, leaving secondary markets to “micro-sites” within your website.

The home page should reflect your company’s unique culture or brand. Your home page will probably get 2-3 times the hits of any other page on your website – so make sure it communicates your branded image.

Finally, the home page needs to offer navigation to the key areas of your website. By this I mean the key areas that your customer is interested in, rather than the key areas that your CEO or marketing department is interested in promoting.

2: Is it intuitive

Do you really know how your customer’s think? How they shop? How they categorise themselves and your products? Many companies create their website navigation buttons and menus around how they view themselves – by department, by product, or by geographic location.

Your customers and prospects are likely to have a very different perspective of your company compared with managers and employees. Once you have worked within a company for a while, it becomes difficult to see your world like an outsider would. Logic is often in the eye of the beholder.

So how do you identify your CUSTOMER's logic? The best long term solution is to establish and use a system for measuring, testing, and optimizing your website. Web statistics help you to:

• know who your viewers are and how they found you
• learn what visitors really want to know about and where they spend their time
• understand the process that your customer’s follow when considering your company or products
• increase the effectiveness of your public relations
• identify your errors and learn from your mistakes

Don’t forget that simply HAVING the statistics serves no purpose unless you USE them to guide you in making regular, incremental improvements to the website.

3: Is it human

Creating brand relationships is all about being human - that means no corporate-speak, company jargon or insider acronyms. Make sure the text you use is appropriate to your customer, his needs and especially his terminology. Don't waste prospects' time with PR "puffery".

4: Is it consistent

Websites evolve over time – that is one of their best features! In doing so, some sections get left behind, while others keep getting updated. Eventually, your home page and company profile present one brand (usually something older since those animated sequences are expensive), while the newer areas of the website have different fonts, colours and language. It isn’t always easy to update a big website all at once, but at least try to keep important elements consistent.

5: Is it YOU!

If you took your logo off your website, would it still be recognizably “you”? Often web designers take a “template” approach – they have a great idea for a website and the next company who requests one gets that idea, perhaps adjusted in a minor way. Or the developer has learned a new skill, and needs a client to test it on. Try to find ways of carrying your brand throughout your website – perhaps in the tone of the copy, the colours or the way you display images. At all times, your website should be consistent with your printed and above-the-line marketing and public relations personality.

Digital marketing combines daunting list of disciplines and skills: programming, graphic design, consumer psychology, market research, sales managment, advertising, fulfillment, customer relations, email marketing...

For advice on effective corporate communication over the internet, contact me on info@intercomm.co.za