It's true...even with the help from the federal government, the US economy is going to be in the doldrums for a while. No sense in complaining, because that won't do any good. Complaining doesn't fix anything, and only serves to make you more conscious of how you wish things were instead of how they are.
And remember great-aunt Josephine used to say about wishes...if wishes were horses, we could ride away!
Wishes aren't horses, so we can't ride. What we can do is take a good, hard look at our businesses and see just how we can set ourselves apart from the competition. Whether it's just freshening up the website or doing a major overhaul, making changes in your business site is a great place to start, especially if that's the main way your clients find you and find out about your services. Sites that haven't been updated in three to six months are considered nearly obsolete, so if yours falls into that category, think about some steps you can take, inexpensively, to help clients have a better experience and spend more time on your site.
Have a graphic designer look at it for cleanliness of design, clarity of message and ease of use.
Have a web developer look at it for functionality, and also for whether you're making the best use of your web presence. Does the page sequence flow? Is the shopping cart easy and accurate? Is the part that needs to be secure really secure? Ask if you're making use of the technology that may have been developed since your site went live: do you have a way to harvest site visitors' email addresses in order to grow your potential client database? Do you have content that's easy to change and update to keep the site fresh once you get it spiffed up?
And are you using, or can you use audio and maybe even video? If you're not already using multimedia, now is the time to consider doing that.
The Consumer Electronics Association reports that almost 75% of US households have broadband access, and for the heavy internet user (someone who spends more than 10 hours a week at home online) broadband penetration is nearly 90%. What this means is that the old rules for websites don't apply anymore...you can be content-rich and interactive with video and audio on the site. You can offer free audio downloads or video downloads, and many business owners are doing that in exchange for a visitor's email address.
You can have a warm, friendly human voice help visitors navigate your site, seeing the things you want them to see, hearing the things you want them to hear, and greeting them any time of day or night, even while you're sleeping!
You can offer audio e-courses...you can add a podcast, one of the hottest marketing tools going right now...you can offer an e-book / audio book download, something the top internet marketers are using to make more money than even they thought possible.
All of this makes you more visible, more credible and more profitable. Because all of these things enhance the stickiness of your site...the likelihood that visitors will stay for more than 5 or ten seconds.
Good design, good navigation and good interactivity equals a website that will set your business apart from your competitor's. Now is the time to be sure your site is truly doing business in your best interest.
Sandy Weaver Carman is a 30 year major market radio professional and is the CEO of Voicework On Demand, Inc
http://www.voiceworkondemand.com
http://www.billysbuildingfund.org
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sandy_Weaver_Carman
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