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It may seem strange to compare a website to an office plant, but there
are similarities.
If you don’t water your plant, give it fertilizer once a month, avoid
extreme temperatures and make sure it has adequate sunshine, the plant will
not thrive. Eventually it will start turning brown, dropping leaves and no
amount of attention will bring it back to life.
For many business owners, their website is like an ignored office plant
that dies from lack of attention. After the website is developed and goes
live, everyone celebrates and then ignores the website. Yet, the website is
expected to continue bringing in leads, bringing in money and selling
product 24/7. But it doesn’t.
A healthy website needs proper care and nurturing. If I were to create
proper care and feeding instructions for a website, here’s what I would
include:
Water Your Website
Visitors that come to your website are thirsty for information. Ask
yourself, “Who is my audience and what do they want to know?” Answer your
audience’s biggest question on your homepage and then continue to provide
more answers throughout the website.
Spend some time thinking about the needs of your audience and researching
what they want to know. What are their biggest problems? What are their most
pressing concerns?
Set your website up so that you are providing answers and solutions to
their biggest problems. Position your business as a solutions provider.
Fertilize Your Website Once a Month
You want people to bookmark your website and come back often. Keep their
attention by having interesting articles on your website. Try to put one new
article a month on your site. You don’t even have to be the one writing the
articles. On one of my sites, I have an automatic feed from another author
who writes a grammar article every month. I put a little bit of code on my
web page and her new article magically appears every month.
Another technique is to go to an online articles directory like
http://www.ezinearticles.com. There are thousands of free articles you can
use on your website. The authors only ask that you post the article without
altering their byline.
Avoid Extreme Temperatures for Your Website
Make sure graphics and animation are not overshadowing your message.
Websites that are graphic heavy tend to take too long to load and people
will leave before they even arrive at your site.
Also remember that graphics can not be indexed by the search engines. So,
if you have a graphics heavy site, your site will get a low ranking with the
search engines.
If you have a “splash” page, consider getting rid of it. A splash page is
a page full of animation and sound that entertains before you get to the
homepage. In order to get to the homepage, the visitor has to click the
“Enter” button. A splash page is a good way to discourage business because
it puts one more obstacle between the visitor and you making a sale.
Provide Adequate Sunshine for Your Website
Constantly check the statistics of your site to find out what’s working
and what isn’t. What pages are being visited most often? What search engines
are bringing you the most traffic? What articles are the most popular? What
keywords are people using to search for your site?
Use the statistical information of your website to continually make
changes. If you find most people are leaving after visiting the homepage, it
could mean that your marketing message is not clear. Maybe your headlines
are not strong enough or maybe your navigation is confusing. Change your
headlines and see what happens. Keep testing until you get the results your
want.
A website can not be ignored; it has to be constantly nurtured to be an
effective marketing tool.
© 2006 Michelle Howe
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