How to Set Your Website Apart in a Slow Economy

By Sandy Weaver Carman

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They're working hard in Washington DC to kick-start our sluggish economy, but face it...even with the help from Uncle Sam, the US economy is going to be slow for a while. No sense in complaining, because complaining doesn't do any good. It 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 what your great-aunt Gertie used to say about wishes...if they were horses, we could ride away!

Wishes aren't horses, so we can't ride away. What we can do is look at our businesses and see just how we can set ourselves apart from the competition. Whether it's spiffing up the website just a tiny bit or doing a major overhaul, making changes in your website is a good place to start, especially if that's the main way your clients find out about your services. Sites that haven't been updated in three months are considered nearly obsolete, so if yours falls into that category, think about some freshening steps you can take, inexpensively, to help clients have a better experience.

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 as well as 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 the best use of new technology that has been developed since your site went live: do you have a way to harvest site visitors' email addresses (with permission!) 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 audio and video now, or is there a good way you can include them? If you're not already interactive on your site, then now is the time to consider adding audio and even video elements.

The Consumer Electronics Association reports that nearly three-quarters of US households have broadband access, and for the heavy internet user, defined as 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, perhaps 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 seconds. And all of this is probably more affordable than you think, and will pay back the investment quickly with visitors who stay longer and are more likely to become customers.

Good design, good navigation and good interactivity equals a website that will set your business apart from your competitor's. As always, if you have questions, I'm happy to answer them if I know the answer or find you an expert to field the ones I can't. Contact me through the weblink below.