posted by Nicolette Beard @ 6:27 PM
With 82%* of consumers using a search engine as their first step in researching a product or service locally, developing a company website is critical to long term business success.
But what happens once the site is launched? Without a content strategy or goals for building and maintaining a web presence, your site will become a “tombstone,” as Lee Odden so aptly phrased it on his online marketing blog.
A tombstone website is one in which the content is static. In other words, DEAD.
Search engines don’t visit static websites often, which hinders your search visibility. Google likes sites with fresh, frequent, relevant content. They’re in business to serve up the best, most accurate and authoritative results. When you stop feeding their “bots,” you are invisible to them.
More importantly, your customer or prospect won’t stop by either, limiting your ability to engage, communicate and convert that visitor to a buyer.
Worse than dated content, however, is an out-of-date design. If you spend any time online, you may have noticed that websites today are less cluttered, easier to navigate, incorporate social aspects and take advantage of the wider computer screen widths and crisper resolutions.
If you think of your website Home page as your “front door,” ask yourself if you’d be embarrassed to invite your boss or coworker over for dinner. What would they encounter? Rusty tools leaning against the doorjamb?
Not having a website is no longer an option for businesses today. Having a website that works is crucial to your online health and longevity.
If you want your visitors to feel welcome and prolong their visit, make it easy for them to stay. Slow loading pages, poorly laid out navigation, flash intros, dated material, all point to a tombstone website.
And if you don’t want your visitors hitting the back button, please don’t have your brother-in-law’s mother’s cousin redesign your website.
*Source: LocalConnex
Related Posts:
2.10.2010
posted by Paige Hebert @ 11:16 AM
Savage is excited to see the redesigned TPC Group website go live!
For the rebuild of the TPC website, Savage utilized the powerful FlexWeb CMS platform to run both the former and the new website in tandem during development. TPC was able to reuse many of the former web assets that were applicable to the new site, which accelerated the development process greatly and provided cost savings in several aspects of the project. The same security and content management tools were able to manage both websites and provided for a smooth and flawless transition to the new TPC website.
To see our Web & Interactive Design in action, visit the TPC Group site.
Related Posts:
1.23.2009
posted by Robin Tooms @ 7:45 PM
In the current Jan/Feb 2009 Issue of STEP Inside Design on “Emerging Talent,” I wrote about the effective design and marketing behind the change.gov website as compared to other government sites, and how this site continued the trends set forth in the earlier campaign site.
From the article:
“There are many historical firsts from this year’s presidential election, but one worth noting is the first highly successful use of websites and social media in a presidential campaign. In looking back over the past year, why this worked seems obvious now, but that is with the knowledge of hindsight. Is it no surprise then that the most brand- and media-savvy candidate to date is also continuing these methods into his transition to president. It’s positive to see good design and communication practices in a government site, so there is hope for the role of design in government yet.
As a whole, government sites are notorious for being confusing and poorly designed. And, for the most part they don’t leverage the latest in online communications trends. While we watched the presidential inauguration this week in person, on TV and of course online, we now turn our attention now to the post-inauguration communications. Yes, January 20, 2009 has passed, but on that date the new whitehouse.gov Website went live. As I expected, the whitehouse.gov site changed drastically from the previous version on that day – not just a design refresh but a reworking of the site approach. Some of the visual hallmarks from the earlier change.gov site are there and there is a distinct emphasis on the free exchange of information. The site is even licensed under Creative Commons, so the intent is for the information to be distributed.
The recent publicity around recovery.gov also got me thinking about the accessibility and transparency the web can provide for the government (or companies) that want to keep open lines of communications with their stakeholders. What does this new transparent government also mean for corporate and investor communication trends? What do you think?
