Having a website is very important for today's businesses regardless of the products and services you offer, however many website owners are adamant that being #1 in search engines is the bee all end all. This is incorrect. While I will say it is best to be #1 in search engines it is not the most important factor, what is more important is making sure that the content on your site is relevant to the product / services you are offering. Equally having a website that is easy to navigate, neat and consistent is important. What is the point in being #1 if viewers of your website can't find what they are looking for on your website and/or your website is so ugly that as soon as it loads the viewer moves on to your competitor's websites.
To have an effective website your goal is not just to increase your website rankings but to also monitor your conversion ratio (the % of visiting users to your website that either purchase directly from your website or create and online enquiry on the web). Google has created a great free tool called Google Analytics, within the analytics there is something called bounce rate. `A Bounce occurs when a website visitor leaves a page or a site without visiting any other pages before a certain session timeout elapses' ¹ So what makes a visiting client purchase from your website or perhaps fill in an online enquiry? First and foremost you have to make it clear to the users what they are buying, if it is a product clearly state the expected delivery date, also include the benefits of the products, why they should buy from you etc. If it is an online enquiry you are trying to get, make it easy for a prospect to contact you, make sure you have your phone number and email address on every single page, make sure that the contact form is no more than one click away from any page and make sure that the contact form doesn't require too many fields i.e. Name, Company Name, Phone Number and Email Address will be sufficient. Just remember the more you require the user to fill out the less chance you will get them to fill out the form.
There are some great tools around that make it easier for your visitors to contact your sales / technical support team etc, one of the tools I really like is Live Help from StarDevelop (http://livehelp.stardevelop.com/). Live Help is a web based instant messenger chat program that allows your team to instantly chat your potential clients answering any questions / queries they have. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounce_Rate
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