Your Website Checklist

Important information – please read

Before you rush off and either create your own website, if you have the skill and experience, or get a professional to set one up for you, it pays to check a few things out.

There’s been a lot of robust research collected over the last twenty years regarding website design and what makes them most effective.

After all, even if you’re only going to invest £59 in your professional business website, you want to ensure it will be working its hardest at gaining you customers and sales.

Check through this list of key aspects that will significantly increase your website’s success:

1. Your number one goal as a prospective business website owner should be to establish a new website that is extremely persuasive, i.e. one that persuades lots of visitors to take action – to either contact you or buy a product.
2. It is therefore essential that you understand customers want benefits not features.
3. Make sure your website has a very clear goal. Is it to make sales on-line? Or is it to generate enquiries? Make sure your web designer knows so they can optimise your website for maximum success.
4. People do business with people they like. By ensuring you are perceived, through your website, in a likeable and real way, you become more attractive to do business with by your target market.
5. A good website needs to have fantastic sales copy supported by great pre-sales content.
6. Your website must be persuasive, but what do your website visitors need to be persuaded of? Your potential customers need to answer six questions for themselves about your company, your products and your service. They are:
   A. Do I trust you?
   B. Do I believe what you’re telling me?
   C. Does what I read on your website show you understand my needs?
   D. If I do business with you what’s in it for me?
   E. What do you want from me?
   F. Do I believe it’s worth it?

Why am I offering you this advice for free?

I am happy to offer you this advice even if you decide to commission someone else to create your website for you. My reason for this is because I am genuinely passionate about helping fellow small businesses maximise their success. I also want to rid the internet of really poor business websites that do not do their owners justice!

Carry out this test

To prepare yourself for the designing of your new website, or to check your current website if you already have one here’s a simple test to carry out to see if a website is as effective as it could be.

The next time you are searching to purchase a product or service via the internet ask yourself, as a potential customer, the questions listed below:

1. Does this website look like it generates serious results for this company?
2. Is this website persuasive?
3. Do I feel an increasing desire to buy from this business?
4. Am I persuaded by this website to at least contact the company?

Be honest with your answers and imagine visitors asking themselves the same questions when they visit your website. This will help you face the facts about what really needs to be done to make your website a real success.