Published in June 18th, 2008
- Move your contact information to the top of all your website pages.
- Make sure to include your physical address, which research shows is one of the most significant aspects of website credibility. Phone number is also required.
- You never know when a potential sales lead wants to reach out and try to buy from you - make it easy by listing your contact info right in front of them.
- Replace all e-mail hyperlinks with feedback forms.
- Forms QUALIFY your sales leads.
- Browsers do not always properly launch the preferred e-mail program when a user clicks a mailto hyperlink. This means MISSED LEADS.
- Almost all junk mail comes from website hyperlinks. If you have coding that looks like "mailto: name@companyname.com", that e-mail address is harvested for spamming.
- If you are already using forms, REDUCE the amount of required information.
- Most forms are abandoned because of ridiculous information requirements that challenge the sense of security of leads and their patience.
- Only ask for one way to contact and allow the sales lead to select which one they enter. Why even ask for a FAX number?
- Allow them to select "Request more information by e-mail" (check box) and/or "Please have a sales person call to tell me more" (check box).
- Setup an XML Sitemap and ROBOTS.TXT file on your website.
- These files can improve how well search engine robots index your website.
- The XML Sitemap should be submitted to Google Sitemaps at least.
- The ROBOTS.TXT file should be added to your root: http://website.com/
- Develop some keywords and advertising text to start an ad campaign.
- Use Google AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Search, or MSN Microsoft AdCenter.
- Note that MSN may provide better results in some situations because purchasing personnel tend to have MSN as their search engine instead of Yahoo or Google.
- Submit your website to the big 3 if it has not already been done.
- Each search engine uses a slightly different approach. Follow their rules for submission!
- Respond to web inquiries as soon as possible.
- Anything past 24 hours will be seen as non-responsive.
- See who is linking to your competition and ask for a link in an appropriate way.
- Search by typing "link:www.thecompetition.com" - without the "quotes" in the big 3.
- Google will show the most important links and the smallest number - start with them.
- Use web analytics to get more information about how your site is performing.
- Google Analytics is fairly easy to setup and allows you to dig fairly deep.
- Check with your web developer or hosting company to see if they have analytics.
