06/02/2011
I recently presented a workshop titled, "Making the Most of Your Website". This is a workshop I've wanted to present for quite some time and I wanted to share some thoughts with all of you.
If you've ever heard me speak, you know that I like to use the analogy of a house for websites. In this talk I focused on the house specifically because I've found over the years that the house isn't always in order, sometimes it's dilapidated, and proper care isn't given to it.
However, many clients are obsessed with driving more traffic to their website. Right now social media is all the rage to make that happen and we've seen website owners go crazy spending tons of time on Facebook and Twitter and the like.
But what happens when a visitor gets to your website?
Is your website ready to greet that person? What action is the user supposed to take? Is that clear? In my experience many clients are going about this the wrong way. You need to fine-tune your website first and then pull people in, not the other way around.
Am I bashing social media? Absolutely not. I am merely making the point that your website needs to have clear goals and be achieving those goals regularly. Don't loose sight of this!
To this end, I offer the following simple questions and steps get you and your website on the right path:
1. What are the goals for your website?
2. What actions should a user take once there?
3. How can I improve my website to make that more likely?
4. Implement answers from step 3.
5. Track results of the revisions.
6. Repeat steps 3 - 5 indefinitely.
For more about this workshop, you can also view my slides and handout. And if you would like to talk more about this, don't hesitate to contact me at derek@gravityswitch.com.
You can also follow me on twitter @derekallard.