Must-Have Website Features for 2009

Over the past two years, the Web has been changing rapidly. If your company’s website isn’t cutting-edge — or at least upto- date — you are telling prospective clients that your company is yesterday’s news. If you put off redesigning your website in 2008, this fall may be the perfect time to think about a new approach for 2009. The ideas below do not require a big investment, but will have a big impact on the effectiveness of your site.

Step 1: Outline your goals for 2009

The first step is to clearly outline what you want your website to accomplish. Be specific in your goal-setting and think about what functions your website needs to successfully meet the outlined goals. For example, if your company’s goal is to get new inquiries through the website regarding a particular service you offer, here are a few things to consider:

• To get more sales leads, you need more traffic. Your website needs to be designed with optimization as a main objective. Designing with search engine optimizing (SEO) in mind means having text-friendly elements on your website. For example, if your company is an information technology firm that focuses on helping small businesses, research keywords that potential clients might enter in a search (e.g., “IT,” “small business technology,” “support”) and integrate those keyword phrases into headlines that are given emphasis through website code or added to textual links. For example, use “business computer support” as a headline or a link on the homepage of your website. Search engines don’t click on buttons, so they need to see the text on the pages. For more information on SEO, visit “How to Search Engine Optimize Your Website” and “Choose Your Keywords Carefully; Your Website’s Success Depends on It”.

• Is the service you’re promoting buried under a “Services” tab? Visitors need to find what they are looking for right away. Spotlight new or important services with a call to action right on the homepage. This will allow you to capture data faster and understand what the conversion rate is for all that you offer. Your conversion rate is measured by the number of visitors to your website compared to the number of visitors who took action. This metric will allow you to test what promotions work and what calls to action returned the greatest response. Also consider giving your featured service its own landing page that is optimized for search marketing for a pay-per-click campaign.

If your goal is to engage users further into your site, a great low-cost change would be adding an action item to popular pages. An action item is text that prompts a visitor to take action. For example, “click here for a free downloadable booklet” or “schedule a free 20-minute consultation.” Take it a step further by testing different action phrases on different popular pages and see which ones yield the most return.

Step 2: Review your metrics from 2008

Defining your goals before you begin your redesign will clarify your expectations for your Web development team. When preparing your plan for 2009, it will be helpful if you look back at 2008 and review your website metrics. These metrics include:

• What pages within your site were popular?

• Did those pages have elements that offered a way to track your conversion rate?

• Which Web browser was most popular? This will help you plan for usability changes and updates based on which Web browsers your visitors are using

• What keywords did visitors use to find your website when searching online?

• Which search engine sent you the most traffic?

The answers to these questions will help you identify what has worked in the past and what areas you may need to work on. One example is looking at the number of visitors that came to your site from cell phones and PDAs. More and more customers are coming from iPhones and BlackBerry devices, as well as 10-inch mini-notebooks and 21-inch monitors. If you found that you have an increasing number of visitors coming from cell phones and PDAs, then you need to think about having an alternate version of the pages of your site designed to work better on those devices. Your Web developer can add in the required scripts to direct traffic to the right page based on the browser your customers are using.