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Website Mistakes May Be Costing You Business

Our last two blogs posed some questions to consider before getting started with your PR program. Another often overlooked item is your website. Consider:

Is it ready for the increased traffic that a proactive PR program might generate?

And, once you have your audience engaged and looking around your website, will it help you generate new business?

If you can’t answer these questions, read on for our top five tips.

1) Poor Functional Design: Most companies incorrectly assume their homepage is the most important page and spend the majority of their budget, resources and time perfecting it. But website behavior has changed over the years and the homepage’s importance is decreasing. Today, B2B clients are heading directly to the company’s “personality pages” — staff, clients/testimonials and products / services — when first evaluating a company, so dedicating time to optimizing these pages to hit your target audience’s sweet spot is recommended.

2) No Metrics: Measuring just a handful of aspects of your website can provide critical insight into key site performance and overall user experience. Performance tracking doesn’t need to be overly complicated; just select a few basic metrics and monitor how they react in response to your various marketing activities. Unsure what metrics to select? Here’s a great article to help you determine where and how to start your monitoring: http://www.accountingweb.com/technology/accounting-software/website-traffic-what-you-should-measure.

3) Poor SEO: Simply put, SEO helps potential new business leads find your company. Employing the right keyword data, meta descriptions, page titles and more can greatly increase your firm’s online discoverability. Another key factor: content. According to experts, quality content is the number one driver of your search engine rankings and there is no substitute for it. So make sure you’re publishing relevant content containing your SEO keywords regularly to further optimize your website. Blogs on topics of interest to your target audience properly positioned online can really increase your SEO.

4) No social media links: In today’s social media society, your website must connect to your other social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). These platforms allow you to leverage your audience to help build and market your brand … and are a great way to drive traffic to your website.

5) Missing a newsroom: Your site’s newsroom is one of the most visited areas for journalists looking for information. The newsroom acts as the main portal for information about your product or service and its importance cannot be overemphasized. A poorly managed or updated newsroom can send visitors clicking in the other direction and never looking back. For specific insight for optimizing your newsroom, check out our 10 tips for your online newsroom.