This post was inspired by a panel I was a part of earlier this year at Digital Bridges to evaluate the effectiveness of local business owners’ websites in Milledgeville, GA.
Here are some of the things we looked for that can help you evaluate the effectiveness of your own website:
Usability
Your site needs to be easy for your customers and potential customers to use. They should be able to find the information they are looking for quickly and navigate throughout your website will ease. Links need to be labeled well and generally, users shouldn’t have more than 2 clicks before reaching the content they need. Every page of your site needs to have a “Call to Action” so the user knows what to do next. Your site should also be cross-browser friendly and load quickly, which are things your web designer should ensure.
Design
As most of you know, your website should be aesthetically pleasing; you need a consistent color scheme that suits the “personality” of your business and the field you are in. For example, it wouldn’t be effective to have a black and gray color scheme for a daycare’s website. However, that same color scheme may work for a fashion website. Your font(s) need to be easily read and an appropriate size as well.
Effective content
Your website’s content should consist of concise but informative text. It should be broken up into small paragraphs and headings and subheadings should be used and clearly labeled. Most web users don’t want to come to your business’s website and read a lot of information. They want to get the information they are looking for quickly. Your content should also include keywords about your business and field to help search engines and users know what the site is about. Include relevant contextual links to help search engines and users understand how different pages relate to each other. Last but not least, make sure to regularly update the content on your site!
Easily found
As we always say– What good is your website if no one can find it? You could have a great looking site with excellent usability and good content, but it needs to be easily found by your target audience in search engines. Although some of the things I have mentioned thus far should help with this, here are some other tips. Make sure to make your title tags, description tags, and H1 tags relevant to search terms your target audience will use to find you. If this sounds like foreign language to you, this is something a web developer can help you with. Make sure to include a site map with links to all of your pages listed in a logical way. It is definitely important to make sure your website is indexing in Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Visit these search engines and type in your URL to see what pages are and are not indexing on your site.
For a one-on-one consultation on your website’s effectiveness, contact us via our contact form or give me a call at 478-390-6770!
