Today, everyone knows a business website is an invaluable tool that can help increase exposure, generate sales opportunities, track inventory, and even streamline certain business tasks. Because technology continues to improve in leaps and bounds, websites can be more effective than ever. But like any high performance machine, it will occasionally need a tune up. If your site is several years old, it may not be as effective as it could be.
Since your website is an investment in your company, it’s important to ensure it has a positive return that can be measured. Does your website continually generate leads and provide opportunities to make money? Is it saving you and your staff time? Does your site answer customer—and potential customer—questions? Can they find current information about your product and services? Can they shop the site quickly and easily?
Usability is another key issue; your site should be simple enough for those with little computer experience to use. It should be intuitive, well organized and structured in a way that makes sense. If a beginner can use it, then anyone can. Your site also needs to work with a variety of systems including new and old versions of web browsers. For instance, many websites often neglect Mac users, which is a fast growing market. If your website only works in 85% of available systems, you could be losing a lot of business.
We give you a case in point from outside the imaging industry as Dr. James Wilson recently updated his dietary supplement website — FutureFormulations.com. “There was a lot of content that needed to be changed and we felt the overall look of the website needed to be updated,” states Dr. Wilson. “There are phases websites go through and ours was starting to look dated; we wanted a fresh, new look.”
Anchor Wave Internet Solutions, a Tucson-based company, helped Future Formulations update its site. One of the improvements the company made was enabling Dr. Wilson and his staff to make their own updates. “We can now make a lot of the changes ourselves,” reiterates Wilson. “Before, we had to give it to a Webmaster whom we couldn’t always depend on to work in a timely manner.”
Since updating, notes Wilson, the company has seen an increase in sales. “The company was growing so fast, which was a good thing, but we didn’t have a chance to make [the site] work faster; which was bad business. When we redesigned the site, we also changed shopping carts, which made it a lot easier for people to order. We now have five times as many orders as before. We like the look of the new site; it’s easier to navigate; we can keep it current ourselves; and we have fewer problems overall.”
Many companies often neglect to update their websites because they feel it’s a burden to do so. However, not updating your site can significantly reduce its purpose for the end-user. If they can’t find what they’re looking for and/or they’re left with unanswered questions, they will look elsewhere. Think about it, what did you do the last time a site frustrated you? People don’t have a lot of time or patience, so it’s up to you to make it easy for them to do business with you. There are a wide variety of solutions out there and Anchor Wave Internet Solutions is merely one that specialize in this area. No matter what route you travel to update your site, just make sure you’re hitting the areas that matter most to your customers.
