beat the competition 
posted in Give it to them direct
Some websites are like meandering anecdotes, when you just want to know the punchline. Often it's a price you're looking for, or whether they stock a specific item or do a particular service. Can you find it? Often the answer is no. You look at the website navigation....it sounds like a sales brochure with meaningless titles. You read pages full of nebulous, cliched business-speak. Still you don't quite know what the company does or what its prices are, or the services it runs.On every page, make it obvious what the site is about
Most of your website visitors will be visiting your site via a search engine, and the majority will be landing on a page of your site that isn't the front page. This means it's important to put in clear indications as to what the site is about on the permanent areas of the site, most importantly the 'header' area (the top part of the page that should feature on all your pages).A plain-English strapline is important below your company name, which should sum up what your company does in a few words. The menu is very important as this gives strong clues as to where to find things. A lot of people are looking for prices of products or services. A big 'prices' or 'buy here/now' link in the permanent navigation means everyone on your site can get the 'bottom line' without having to tease it out of the site through careful browsing (as if they'll bother anyway). An FAQ is a good idea too.
Cut out the waffle
Most visitors are quickly scanning content, rather than slowly absorbing it. Summarise the gist of a page at the top, or make the page title very obvious as to the contents below - it lets people know the essentials and whether they need to read further.Use descriptive internal links
Internal hyperlinks should be descriptive and not just a 'read more>>>'. Give them a clue as to what the page linked to is about in the link itself. This is good for your visitors and the search engine spiders who can more easily categories your pages (which is ultimately good for your search engine rankings).Look fresh compared to the competition
Most companies resort to business-speak - to look credible and authoritative. But it's a style that's becoming as invisible to website visitors as banner ads are. People want fresh and direct communication from a web page - it appeals to the way they browse. Give it to them direct - let them know what you're about and the essentials and make this information readily available on every page of your website - whether the info is in the header, or just one click away in the navigation.We're learning too
Most of the content amendments to this site are simplifications!Share this article:
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