To keep peoples’ attention on your site, it needs to be ‘great’ rather than just ‘good’. Savvy internet users are becoming increasingly fussy about who they do business with, and your site needs to stand out and make sure those people do business with you.

You don’t need to spend a fortune on a new website (unless it really needs it), but there are a few things you can do to improve your visitors’ experiences within your existing site.

1. Review your website content. If it’s a bit vague or out of date, you need to take some time to re-write it. If you sell a business service, make it clear who your target market is. If you sell a product, go through your product images and descriptions and make sure they’re clear, well written and enticing – vague product descriptions won’t inspire people to buy from you!

2. Create clear calls to action. Do visitors to your website know what you want them to do or where to go when they arrive on the home page? Do your product or service pages make it easy for visitors to know what to do next?

3. Keep content up to date. This is something we’ve written about many times on Savvy Marketers. If you start a blog or news page then you need to commit to keeping it up to date. Is the information on all your web pages up to date? Do all your links work? Broken links can put visitors off as much as an out of date site!

4. Commit to your social media activities. I wrote about this just before Christmas as social media can now influence search rankings. If you’ve made a start on some of the social networks, then plan out who you want to reach with what messages. Remember consistency is key.

By improving the visitor experience on your site even within your existing site design, you really can see a difference to the leads and sales coming through.

What are your plans for your website for 2011? Please share them here!

Here are two common mistakes that we see:

So many web pages, and blogs start off with all the essentials – great headline, good copy, nice graphics and design – and then ….. nothing!  Unless you tell your visitors what to do next, they may view other pages on the site, and then click away, fully intending to return another day.  But will they?

It’s a good idea to give them really simple, clear instructions, like “the next step you need to take is to visit the xyz page.” Don’t worry – your visitors won’t feel insulted, they’ll be happy to know what to do!  For example, you’ll want to capture your first time visitor email address – asking them to type their details in a sign up box is a perfectly valid call to action.

Other web pages, blogs, even sales pages, are often very ‘busy’ with so many different offers and graphics that it’s a bit like being in a sweet shop as a child – you don’t know what to look at first!  I saw this on a sales page recently and found myself drawn to look at and click on other offers – which were taking me away from the product this page was selling!  While it’s nice to earn some affiliate revenue, it shouldn’t be at the expense of selling your own product or service!

There’s a great saying in marketing that goes: “the confused mind always says no.” Don’t confuse visitors to your website by giving them too many choices.  Similarly, don’t make them guess what they should do next.  Have just one objective for each of your web pages; leaving your visitors in no doubt as to what you want them to do next.