Websites provide customers with access to your company 24/7. Today a website is an intrinsic element of a company’s marketing mix and it’s essential to get it right.
These are our 7 top tips for upgrading your website.

1. Decide your objectives

• What do you want to get out of your website?
• To generate leads
• To reassure existing customers
• To check stock
• To enable customers to buy online?
• Before you review your website, decide what you need.

2. Prepare your content

• Getting noticed in a crowded world has become more challenging and fighting your way up the search engine ladder can be tough.
• It starts with great content.
• Content that’s relevant and recent:
• relevant to people searching for your products or services
• recent enough to attract the search engines.

3. Less is more

• Too much information on a website can lead a potential customer to make a negative decision about your business instead of picking up the telephone and calling you.
• Look at alternatives to lengthy text articles.
• Can you add a YouTube video?
• Or a PowerPoint presentation?
• Or a series of great photos?

4. Looking good

• Design matters when we encounter so many brands on a daily basis but ease of use is more important!
• A great looking site that is difficult to navigate is likely to lose more visitors than a less attractive, but easy to use site.

5. Don’t forget the construction

• Many sites use flash or other plug-ins, but this isn’t available for Apple iPad and mobile phone users.
• Sites using this technology may need a re-think.

6. Make sites search engine friendly

• There are many simple tasks from creating good ALT tags and adding appropriate Title text, to updating content and finding suitable sites with which to connect.
• Get the construction right from the start.

7. Link it all together

• If you’re using YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter or blogs, don’t forget to tell your visitors to explore these sites too!