A Better Web Site 101

The smart folks over at Inside CRM have a nice post of quick tweaks will help you keep visitors engaged.

Here's a handful of some of my favorite tips from the article: 101 Five-Minute Fixes to Incrementally Improve Your Web Site.

Copywriting
Content, specifically text, is perhaps your site's most important asset. Make sure that it's up to snuff by following these improvements.

#5 Make headlines meaningful. Be sure to change any vague or cutesy headlines to something more up-front and meaningful.

#10 Stay simple. Simplify your message simply to avoid confusing visitors, while at the same time improving conversion rates.

#18 Be concise. Make sure that your copy is only as long as it needs to be to get your point across reasonably.

Usability
If your site isn't usable, visitors will not stick around. Take these small steps, and you'll have a more user-friendly site that's ripe for conversions.

#21 Make navigation consistent. Make sure that your site's navigation is on the same place on each page so that visitors don't get confused.

#24 Never ask for more information than you need. If you're currently asking for excessive information, rethink your data-mining tendencies. When you get greedy for data, you'll turn off some visitors.

#27 Link the site logo to the home page. Visitors will expect your logo to link to the home page, so make it easy for them to find it.

Search Engine Optimization
Follow these tips if you'd like to see an improvement on your search-engine rankings.

#35 Replace underscores with hyphens. In search-engine results, words separated by underscores will run together, while hypens will create a space between each word.

#39 Update content often. Give search engines a reason to keep coming back with fresh content.

#44 Turn off music. No one wants music to greet them every time they click a link, so turn off the music — or at least offer an easy option for disabling it.

#51 Avoid resizing the user's window. Let the user be in control of their browser, or your site will lose credibility.

Design
Spruce up your site's appearance using these design fixes.

#74 Reduce choices. Avoid overwhelming your visitor with lots of different options.

#77 Stay consistent. Check to make sure that colors and design are in the same general scheme so that visitors know they're still on your site.

#86 Limit each page to one topic. Give each page a singular purpose to avoid confusing visitors.

#92 Convert PDF files to HTML. Make browsing flow a little smoother by converting PDF files to a format that's more easily readable in a browser.

Great stuff, thanks guys!

That's Right,

HMK