When did you last look at your own website?

Let’s keep one really important thing in mind; your website is there to sell your products and services so you can make money. Also, your website is not for you. It doesn't matter if you like it – if your customers like it, you win.

There are two important questions that you need to ask yourself every six months.

1. Does your website make logical sense?

2. Does it flow from the introduction of your products and services to understanding and then on to calls to action to make a purchase or get in touch?

The first step is to read the current content of your site. By ‘read’, I do not mean just sit at your computer and read the information on the screen using the voice in your head. I mean read it out loud. By reading it out loud you will hear what the words are saying, and you will hear if they ring true for you.

Better still, have someone read the site to you. If you do not have anyone handy you can use a text to speech software system for this. I use a program called Natural Reader which is a free download that has enough features for you to use https://www.naturalreaders.com.

You don’t have to memorise every page of your website, but you need to read and check that every page is relevant to the message you want to deliver and the actions you want your visitors to take as a result of visiting your website.

Once you have ‘read’ your site, it is time to think and analyse if the pages are as you expected them to be, but more importantly, if they are like your customers would expect them to be.

One of the hardest things to do is to understand your business through the eyes of a customer, or potential customer. As you read keep thinking ‘will this help the customer to choose to buy from me?’

Are there clear clues for the visitor to take the next step, be that by online or to contact you?

With content, less is more. You need to use well written and descriptive text to attract the customer, think of every word as being an investment in future business.

Fine-tuning your content also includes images; an image truly does say a thousand words and a video on your site says a million! Again, the images on your site are an investment in future sales.

It can be useful to print out the main pages of your site, these would include Home, About, Contact, Services (products), Intro, Testimonials and a service or product detail page, so you can review hard copies in the future.

We strongly suggest you read and review your website like this at least monthly, so you know exactly what and how you are telling potential customers about your company and services/products.