Great design does it all. It creates a search engine friendly environment where the customer (in a business website) feels comfortable about being there, but is compelled to take action by the elements on the screen. To get a truly great business website design, it often takes several people working together to build a holistically great site.

The Designer – That would be me. I work as a full time freelance designer and as a part time designer with WaterfrontWebWorks.com as time allows. My role is to bring the whole package together, to collaborate with all of the individuals and tie it into one cohesive package.

The SEO and Marketing people – Frankly it is hard to get designers to work well with SEO and marketing people and vice versa, because they think they are competing. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. To succeed, they HAVE to not only work together, but share ideas.

The business person – This is one that most designers miss. They do not bring the business person, who knows the nuances of the business . into the process until it is too late. They design the site and then do not offer creative involvement with these people and that affects the design. Unless I have been designing websites for a specific industry for YEARS, I know I will miss something.

The bottomline is this.. bringing all of these people together is time consuming, frustrating and adds cost. Yet it is completely worth it if you want to have a great business site that will convert people into customers.

Do it once. Do it well. Do it right.

Over the last three years of having the site has made me value 3 principles in building the traffic to a blog or a website. Write stuff that is worth reading. Build a site that has quality visually. And finally, respond when people interact with you online. Seems like a simple recipe, and it is, but it works.

A famous blogger once quipped when someone asked him about content, “Would you read your own blog?”. I thought that was a little harsh at first, until I thought through it a bit. How many website are out there that are NOT worth reading. That actually is a really good measure of a site, whether it is a blog or not. Have I spent the time on my real estate site to make sure that I have what the visitors that come to it are looking for. Does it engage them?

Visual quality is another important thing for me. I spent the money and the time to hire a great graphic designer (contact me and I will be happy to refer you to her!) to design the header for the site. Was this needed? YES. If you want people to visit and come back, they need to be comfortable, if not WOWed by the site.

Finally and most importantly, I think you need to connect with your readers or visitors to your site. If they take a moment to comment or register or add their two cents on my site, then i can take  a second and respond (and quickly) to it. The idea is to engage them and get them into a conversation. You cannot have them as a client unless you have them as a conversation first. It all starts there!

What analytics can show you:

At its most basic level, setting up a website with Google Analytics can show you a) Where people came from the get to your site, b) What they are doing while they are on your site and c) what causes them to leave. What I have found is that monitoring these three simple things and how they change over time can give me clues as to how my website is performing.

Where do they come from?

Much of my site traffic is driven by SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but there are other methods as well. You can use Pay per Click advertising, traditional advertising that has your website information on it, and email marketing to name a few, The old adage that 505 of your advertising is wasted, you just do not know which 50% is no longer true. Smart advertising and marketing in today’s world means taking a look at which advertising is actually working and doing more of what works and less of what does not.

What are they doing on my site?

What percentages of people that come into my site are taking the action that I want them to take. (In my case buying or selling a home in Sarasota)? Is that number increasing or decreasing. Can I increase the calls to action or simply use calls to action that are more effective to boost the percentage of people taking action on my site? Absolutely.

Why are they leaving?

By monitoring the bounce rates on the various pages in my sites, I can see where people are exiting my site. Are they leaving from the site where I WANT them to? (In my case that would be a detailed real estate listing or a contact me page or even possibly a registration page.

It literally takes 5 minutes a day to look at what people are doing in my site and it they are leaving from a given page, taking the time to correct it.

Yes. That is the truth of it.

Lots of people come to your website, take a look around. Get some information. Maybe they even get ALL the information that they came for…but it is useless unless they take ACTION – To call you. To contact you. To buy. To give you THEIR information so that you can contact them. We provide solid calls to action that deliver results.

So what is your plan? If you do not have one or if you want to consult with us on how to monetize your site before you begin, we will be glad to help you. It will be time and money well spent.

Why is this important?

The first reason is that you want users who happen to click on links to the old pages that may be out there to be able to find the RIGHT information on the new site. This makes sense. They should not go to the home page or a generic looking page that say 404 Error File not here… Yes, it takes time to do this but it is important.

I recently saw a major real estate site NOT do this and lose a major amount of traffic. (Which is the OTHER reason.) When a site has pages that no longer exist, eventually they get dropped from the search engines and all of the traffic that you were getting from the search engines goes away. Not good.

Doing redirects is EASY but it takes time. Many sites have the ability to do redirects right in the content management system (my real estate site does.). But if that is not the case, your website administrator will be able to do it. Yes it make cost you an hour or two, but it is worth it.

It costs you too much in GETTING people to visit your site to just make them go away confused and frustrated.

Southern Indiana Web Works is a firm dedicated to making sure that no matter what your goals, we help your build your web presence in a manner that takes you in the direction of your goals. Wehether it is design, web developments, social media integration, e-commerce, or consulting, we have what it takes to get you there.

And world class web presences that we create do more that. They COMPEL visitors to become your customers.

That is precisely what we do.

In addition to creating the most effective and efficient websites, we also consult and assist in larger projects requiring team efforts.