Over this series we will look at some internet marketing tips to boost your business into high gear.

If you are wondering why your business doesn’t seem to be working out the way you imagined, maybe it’s time for an overhaul of your internet marketing strategy!  In particular, whatever sort of business or organisation you might be, your should regularly review what your online presence says to prospective clients and business partners about you.

The most fundamental part of your online marketing strategy is your website.

The majority of small and medium sized businesses, associations and service organisations already have some sort of website, but unfortunately many appear quite unprofessional and dated.  Have you really thought about your website’s impact on your clients?  So the first of my internet marketing tips is to:

Review your website

Some common pitfalls of websites are:

• unappealing colours
• ugly graphics
• poor or inconsistent navigation
• broken links
• too many advertisements
• overused flashing items (even more critical now that iPads don’t handle flash)
• too many different fonts
• spelling/grammar errors
• having to scroll a lot to read things
• an abundance of unrelated material
• unsightly or intrusive pop-ups
• every link opening in a new window
• image overload

Your website is a reflection of your professionalism, and if it isn’t up to par, you could be losing money. Go to your website now and view it with a critical eye, or have a critical friend give you their honest opinion. You might not want to hear what they have to say, but it’s only going to work for you, not against you.

Visit your favourite websites and really look to see what it is that makes their website so appealing to you. Are the colours relaxing? Do they have good, related content? Can you read through a page without being bombarded with spelling errors or advertisement?

Once you have an idea of what’s working and what’s not, make a list of all the things you can do to improve your website, and then do them. Keep it clean, simple, easy to read, and you will be well on your way to website success.

If this is all too hard, or you are too busy running you business to have time to manage this, one of the best internet marketing tips I can offer is to Contact us immediately about a marketing audit including a free website assessment so we can turn your website from an expense into a high performing profit centre as soon as possible.