Website Checklist

Points to consider:

Does it meet the 8 second rule? 

The general website rule is that a prospective customer  will take 8 seconds to evaluate your Home Page in terms of:

• Does it look professional?
• Does it sell what I want?
• Does it look like a trustworthy site?

Does your Website Design look professional? 

Customers need to feel confident before they will buy or contact you from your site. Having the tools to design your own Website may appear to save you money, but if it doesn’t bring in the sales then it could be a false economy. Once your design is done, realistically, how many times will it change in the future? Having a content managed Website means you can change the Homepage content and Product related information yourself, as the Website Design template will allow you to ‘pour’ the content into the Website Design ‘mould’.

Is the Website content relevant and interesting? 

It is essential to keep your content, pricing and proposition up to date and competitive in order to gain sales and contacts. In order to reduce costs and keep your Website content fresh, your Website must have the facilities for you to maintain the information yourself. This ensures the Website is dynamic and will save you money by putting you in control.

Does the Webpage take too long to load? 

A poor Website Design can be responsible for slow page load times, but also the hosting package used can have a significant impact. Minimising the use of large graphics and/or flash will help reduce the physical size of the webpage.
Choosing the right hosting package can make all the difference to the customer’s impression of your Webshop, remember the 8 second rule?

How well is your Website performing? 

Knowing who is accessing your Website, from where and for how long, will enable you to change your website content in order to keep competitive. Tracking your advertising successes and monitoring your goal conversions are essential if you want to maximise your sales.

Is your Website search engine friendly? 

Would you build a shop in the middle of a field in Scotland? Putting your Website on the Internet is just like this example, therefore you need to ensure your Website is Search Engine Friendly so that they can ‘read and index’ your Website in their directories. Gaining traffic to your site should be considered to be an essential part of your new Website, after all who wants a shiny new website with no visitors?

What options are there available to get traffic to your site, in a cost effective manner? 

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) covers the technical and content parts of your Website to ensure your Website is included into the major search engines that will drive traffic to your Website. Using Google Adwords, to bid for keywords can be an effective way to obtain good quality traffic, but used incorrectly it could waste a lot of money. Make sure your SEO expenditure covers both the technical and content aspects of your Website.