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Can You Answer These Questions?
Over 60% of Fortune 500 purchasing agents check out a supplier's website before confirming an appointment to see the representative. Broadband (High Speed) internet service connections surpassed dial-up for the first time in 2004. The internet is now checked more frequently than the phone book when searching for a local product or service. That's right… LOCAL searches. Online retail continues to grow at more than 20% per year, well outpacing the growth in traditional channels.
How many visitors visited your website in the last week? What pages did they spend the most time on? Which did they not even look at? How long did they spend on your site? Were they a first time or a repeat visitor? How did they find your site? What page did they enter through and which did they leave from? At what time of the day is your site most and least visited? What day of the week is most popular? Weekends? Lunch times? How many contacts to your website have led to further communication or orders? What do visitors like and dislike about your site? When was the last time you updated your website? Do you even know how or who can do it for you?
Does your website enhance or detract from your business image? Does your site make doing business with you easier, provide education or other information? Is it entertaining? Is your site expensive to maintain? Can you point to numbers that show your website saves any costs of doing business? Does your site save you time? Does your site provide answers to commonly asked questions and save precious human resources for other tasks? To what extent does your website draw customers in to your establishment? Do you even have or need and establishment? Does your website completely and effectively take care of your customers' needs without further actions necessary? How clear and concise is the information on your site? Do you use images to display ideas as well as words? How accessible is your site to those with impairments,
old computer equipment or limited computer skills?
Does your site provide a product/service, explain a product/service, or invite further questions about your products/services? Is this consistent with your business objectives and organizational strengths?
Not all of the above questions are applicable to all businesses, but are representative of kind of questions that a web-site owner should ask themselves periodically and understand the answers if they are to make the most out of the internet for their business or organization. A website is just another bill unless it is used intelligently and actively in concert with other tools and resources. On it's own it is nothing, but used properly websites have made millionaires, and everyday ordinary people next door do a lot more with a lot less.
A few of the above questions can be addressed by just taking the time to sit down, review, browse and make notes. Others can be addressed via tools widely available on-line, or in bookstores, and still others best by maintaining a simple yet constant awareness of how your web site represents you, how it works for you, and how it rewards you, then maximizing these benefits where they give you the most for the least. Arguably it can pay major dividends to hire a professional to evaluate both your website and your business, and recommend ways an effective internet strategy can be a profitable, if not major contributor to your success instead of simply another bill to pay.
About the Author
John Geiger owns and operates a local affiliate of WSI Internet Consulting and Education, a Toronto based global network of consultants, developers and production centers providing consultation as well as turn-key internet business solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises to include web-site design, development and hosting; site maintenance and upgrades, full e-commerce solutions, and more.He can be reached at 828-320-5929 www.webmasters-wsi.com
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