In his book Your Marketing Sucks! marketing consultant Mark Stevens states: “If your website is nothing more than an electronic brochure, you are squandering the power of the medium.”
B2B copywriter and consultant Dianna Huff agrees. In her blog post, Your B2B Small Business Website is Not a Brochure she gives five crucial points of difference between small business websites and brochures.
I learn something new about website copywriting every day.
Over at Smashing Magazine they’ve put together a list of 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines.
The first tip is to put form labels above the field. It makes sense because we fill out forms from top to bottom.
Looks like I’ll have to email my website designer and get him to tweak my forms!
Other pearls of wisdom include:
So many business owners focus solely on increasing website traffic – getting more visitors to their site – to the detriment of improving website conversion – converting more browsers into buyers.
The bottom line is that you’re wasting your money on traffic if your site’s doing a poor job of conversion. It’s like putting a massive ad in the Sunday paper and having hundreds of people visit your store, but not having enough salespeople to serve them. They just leave with a low opinion of your operation.
Just like clothes and hairstyles, website design can go stale. If your website was designed back when Levi’s Engineered Jeans were the freshest thing in fashion, it might be time for a redesign.
But while a site makeover is always a nice ego boost, it may not lead to improved results… unless you look beyond just the look and feel. This short video illustrates why it pays to think about what your customers want from your website before you redesign:
Every profession has its secrets.
Accountants have tax loopholes. Photographers use PhotoShop to make their portrait sitters look younger. Chefs have recipes passed down from their grandmothers. And successful online marketers also have insider information.
Okay, maybe the four ingredients of a profitable website that I’m about to reveal aren’t exactly secret. They’ve been written about endlessly on the Web and in articles and books. But they may as well be secret for all the attention most website owners pay to them.
Are you keen to leverage the web to promote your business, but only have a minuscule budget for website development? This four-step process shows you how to build an effective small business website on the cheap. Real cheap.
"I help my clients communicate more effectively, improve their images, and increase their sales with high quality copywriting."
