I received a newsletter today from Xemion, a website design directory that Kinesis has a listing in. There was an article that I found interesting called 10 Ways to Help Your Website Sell.

And while the message was directed at designers, some of the tips are the same thing we recommend to our clients regarding their website strategy. So I've gone through and selected the best advice, made some minor edits and replaced "web designer" with "company" so they apply to your company regardless of your industry.

Here are the key points:

Keeping Your Website Useful as a Top Marketing Tool

1. Update Your Website Often Of course any SEO expert knows the value of updating their website. It draws the attention of the search engines. Search engines aren’t the only reason to continually update your website. Clients want to know that you are staying up with the times. Update your design once a year to reflect the current design trends on the internet for your core client base. Content updates help your site to stay fresh and give the customer plenty of reasons to stay on your website. Copyrights should have the year they were developed, but you should also list current year. For example, list your copyright like this - © 2000 – 2009. This also gives your potential client an idea of just how long you’ve been in business as well as an idea of your experience level.
2. Fix your broken site Make sure your website is working. It’s not just broken links to outside resources you need to fix, it’s the way your website works in the different browsers. You need an nice, clean, exciting layout to promote yourself but more importantly you need a website that works. Test your website often. Visit it once a week to check that everything is working in multiple browsers. Make sure all links are still working. Check your site as you check your website’s statistics. You are checking your stats right?
3. Solve Their Problems Most companies list the product or service features, but that doesn’t tell a potential client how this will help solve his or her problem. Remember that your website is also your salesperson. Salespeople find out someone’s problem so they can fix it. Just the other day I had a young lady come to my door selling a cleaning product. She was quite good in an infomercial sort of way. The key thing that she did was to get me agreeing with her about my problems and that I wanted a safe product around my pets and my kids. So as you write content for your website, think about how you can get your visitors to agree with you about different problems they are facing. Then, show them how you can fix their problems. Show them the benefits of using your services.It’s easy to say you’re the best company in your marketplace, but go a step further and tell the customer what that means to them. In other words, what’s in it for them? If you have trouble defining your benefits, ask the people who would know best – your customers! If they are happy with your products or services, they will be able to tell you what problem it overcomes and the benefit they receive. Besides, what better way to find out how you’re doing in servicing their needs?
4. Include Contact Information As the internet has grown, so has the number of fly-by-night operations. One day they are here and the next they’ve disappeared. Make sure you have physical address location posted on your website as well as a phone number. This information is reassuring to potential customers. It gives your business a professional polish rather than the appearance of hiding yourself behind the internet.
5. Tell Them What’s Next After they’ve purchased or started the contact process, tell them what the next step will be. If they will be downloading a template or setting up a consultation, let them know when or how they will download it once they’ve completed their purchase. Or, if you will contact them, let them know when you will contact them and how. Or better yet, give them options on a form. Let them choose how you will contact them. Of course, the best way to handle it is to contact them within a day. You don’t want to give them a chance to change their mind. Make sure you explain each step and show them what great customer service you provide right from the beginning.

Thanks to Desirea for these great tips!