Inc has an awesome slideshow presentation explaining a few steps to take to improve your website. Here is a list of the five I most agreed with.

1. Get into Analytics

Numbers, numbers, numbers. Metrics, metrics, metrics. Without this, you have no way to measure the effectiveness of your website. There are plenty of free Analytic software out there that makes it impossible to have an excuse NOT to have one. You want to know where people are coming from and what they’re doing on your site. This helps you establish trends, which in turn helps you plan and organize your site to close the sale. Seriously, there is no excuse NOT to have this.

2. Identify your Best Customers

If you can establish who your best customers are, you can help establish trends. This will keep you from wasting valuable resources on bad sales. With the trends, you can push your sales people on specific people who are more likely to buy.

3. Make Small Adjustments

“The beauty of the Web is that it’s easy to experiment and collect feedback.” Inc is exactly right with that statement. Once you have a website up, its easy to make small adjustments. If you hear that your colors are clashing, have the designer rework it. If someone tells you your copy is off putting, get it rewritten. If no one wants to give you their CC information, add BillMeLater or Paypal.

4. Boost your Search Rankings

SEO is vital in this web world. A lot of the work can be done by the website owner, so don’t get sucked into an SEO trap. Some companies also use shady practices looked down upon by Google. Just do your research beforehand. You can do a little SEO boosting yourself by ensuring you are using keyword rich information on your webpages, be part of a community in your niche, provide assistance, and slowly build inbound links that way. The sad part of SEO is that it takes time and energy, but the benefits pay off tremendously.

5. Keep it Simple

Nothing more bugs me then looking at a website that is cluttered and just screaming at me. Clean simple designs are more effective than throwing everything you have on the front page. If you’re functional, the graphics and video is not necessary. Just stick to what your market wants and make sure you provide something easy and clean.

Tags: Business, promoting

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 10:30 am and is filed under E-Commerce Guide | . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.