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Face a Hard-Hitting Interview Regarding Your Website Goals
Especially in an election year, investigative reporters prepare diligently to ask the tough questions and elicit the right response. You should be conducting the same sort of interrogation for your website. Call it on the carpet! Be sure it is doing the job you expect it to do. Start by asking the journalist’s traditional “5 W” queries:
Who is your Target Market?
Resist trying to be everything to everyone. Rather than a scatter-shot approach, focus on a specific audience to direct your content, style and message so that it resonates precisely. If it makes sense, consider creating exclusive landing pages for different audiences to attract them and then guide them on through the rest of the site.
What is your Call to Action?
What do you want visitors to do once they are at your site? If you don’t make the CTA clear, they have no reason to act. Use your analytics to measure your CTA’s performance so you can work on improving your Call. Calls to Action could include making an appointment, trading an email for a downloadable product, or just a straight-up sale.
Where does your audience hang out?
You want to be where they are, reminding them to go to your website. The right kind of marketing, especially digital marketing, is important for making people familiar with your brand, interested in your offers, and comfortable with engaging with you. Consistency, but not complacency, is the key.
When will your site be updated?
With today’s web tools, folks don’t need to contact IT to update their content, but stale web pages are still a problem and that will cost you in search engine visibility. If you aren't going to update your pages regularly on your own, hire someone else to do it.
Why should visitors come to your site?
To make your Call to Action, you have to bring people to your website for them to see it. Calculators, how-to articles, videos and other types of useful and interesting content give folks a reason to visit your site and hopefully tell their friends as well. Make an effort to be creative and provide content worth seeing.
How will visitors find you?
Okay, it’s really the 5 W questions and 1 H question, but this one is important. Before you add any content to your site, you should know the search terms that people will use to find you. Use those words in your headlines, page names, image tags, blog posts and other content. Both search algorithms and human beings need that guidance to find you in the huge pool of information available online.
Just like investigative reporters regularly interview newsmakers, you’ll need to ask these questions of your website again to be sure it’s still relevant. Whether you are starting fresh, or just want to refocus, Sprocket Websites is ready to be your website partner. Contact us today to discuss the possibilities.
This is an update to “Investigative Reporter Questions Your Website” dated 8/6/2012.
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Kate Gingold
I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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