Juicing Your Web Site Today

 This column was written in July 2009 for Smart Business Network.

You have a Web site.If you are like most managers, you assume it is chugging along generating leads, holding down the costs of hard copy promotional material, and making some sales.

Then you learn that your Web site gets no traffic. Even worse the money you thought the Web site was saving you is delivering the opposite--higher costs.

What do you do?

Getting a straight answer to this question is surprisingly difficult. Your information and technology people use the Web but pay little attention to the Web site beyond keeping it online.

The marketing people create content using a fill-in-the-blanks template. Once the content has been approved by you and maybe legal, the marketers move on to the next project.

Your Web consultant looks like your son or daughter and seems very attentive. The consultant describes many options but seems vague about the cost and complexity of some of the recommendations.

Your accountant recommended that you speak with a firm specializing in generating Web traffic. The accountant's recommendation is based on the search engine optimization company's being a client.

You talk with the SEO company and come away with recommendations for a study, a taxonomy, a backlink campaign (not clearly explained), and several other ideas.

Net net: you have zero idea about what to do. Meanwhile, the Web site sounds like a giant drain sucking money and resources.

Now what?

In the next few paragraph, I want to highlight some basic questions to ask and give you some guidelines for plugging that drain.

Question 1. For your tech resources. Is the code on our Web site clean? There are free online validation services to answer this question. If the answer is, "Yes"' go to question 2. If the answer is, "No", get a person to fix the code. Cascading style sheets are the accepted way to control the way content is presented on a Web page.

Question 2. For yourself and your site visitor. Does your Web page come up quickly? The software robots that index Web sites can skip over Web sites that are not quick to respond.

Question 3. For yourself and your site visitor. Is the content fresh and timely? If you have not updated your Web site or Web log content within the last day or so, you need to step back into the batter's box.

Question 4.For yourself or the person who writes copy for the Web log, do we have index terms (now called metatags) for each page? Regardless of your answer, you may want to get some input from a librarian. In my experience, most librarians know about indexing.

Question 5. For your friend who is an English teacher. Is the language used on the Web pages easy to understand, organized, and consistent. of words? Lousy writing befuddles Web search systems like Google's and Microsoft's. Most people skip information that is poorly written.

Question 6. For your tech resource and yourself. Do you have reports about who visited the site and what content attracted the most traffic.

With the answers to these questions, you can sit down and do some thinking about how to improve your Web site. Fortunately, fixing or responding to these five issues is not difficult.

Let me run through some basic actions you can take.

The fixing of the code, including the use of cascading style sheets, is something most people with a year or two of computer science or Web coding experience can handle. Quite a few Web sites have been produced "one size fits all" software like Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Contribute. I recommend looking for tech help running a short advertisement on Craigslist.org. Winnow the email addresses, talk with those who have interest in your project, and let that person work through the site. One tip: Don't put the revised code live online until you have a second pair of eyes check the changes. Most technical problems arise because getting a second opinion is not necessary.

It is. Once the code has been reviewed, run the page through a validator which is like a fussy school teacher. Any issues can be resolved. Rinse. Repeat. You can try the free World Wide Web Consortium's online checker at http://validator.w3.org/.

Performance (response time after a click) makes it easy for a visitor to a Web site to explore. If you put a turtle in front of harried business professional looking for your company, that visitor will click away. My patience runs out if a site takes more than three or four seconds to render. Longer than that, I click away. My son told me that he wants a site to render in less than one second. Speed pulls. To get better performance, you can look for a hosting service that performs well. When you fix up your existing site's code, the tech people can optimized your pages. The best bet is to seek a speedy hosting provider and tweak the Web site code. Make images smaller and avoid clunky add ins that erode the user experience. Pop ups, eye candy like autorunning videos, and graphic flourishes should be viewed with a critical eye. If not absolutely necessary, drop them. You can read a lisst of performance best practices and even download a tool to test your Web site at http://developer.yahoo.com/performance.

Who wants to read old information? No one with a pressing business problem. Your Web site should contain current, fresh, timely and relevant information. If you are not updating the information on your Web site, resign yourself to appearing dozens or hundreds of page deep in a Google results list. Put the date on which you change a page so your reader and the indexing robot can figure out if spending more time on your site is likely to be worthwhile.

I know that it takes time to create content. Face the facts. Stale content reduces your Web site's appeal. If you don't update your Web site, you may be harming your company's business image, its sales, and growth opportunities. In today's economic climate, your Web site is a powerful attractor. Why put an electrified fence around your Web site.

The indexing of a Web site is very important. If you are in a service business, the need for good indexing is essential. The reason is that if you index with the term "financial services" or "business consulting", the indexing systems lump large numbers of businesses together. Specific terms and phrases give the Google and Microsoft indexing systems some rawhide to bite. Instead of "financial services" consider "student loans for gifted students". Instead of "business consulting" or "management consultant" think about "compensation planning for high tech start ups". The idea is to go beyond broad, fuzzy terms. I have had clients tell me that librarians are a wonderful resource. Use them. Keep in mind that the headline of a story on a Web page is a form of indexing. Consistent language in indexing and headlines is an indication of the consistency and focus of a Web page and a Web site.

Remember your English teacher when you were a sophomore in high school? That person emphasized the importance of simple, direct, clear writing. Most business professionals write jargon choked sentences. Ideas get lost in silly rhetorical flourishes. You have to look at your contacts, identify a person with that English teacher's rectitude, and enlist that person's help in fixing up the writing on your Web site. For new content, write it yourself or turn to an employee or contractor. The key is to keep the English teacher in the loop. Let that person provide comments designed to make the writing precise, on point, and focused on what you want to get across. Most executives think their writing is wonderful. That's part of the mental framework of a successful person. Now that you know you are wonderful, keep in mind that even Albert Pujols has a coach.

You need one for writing. Period.

What's the payoff from taking this five minute.

First, you will get more from your Web site investment. You can measure this in terms of traffic, where you appear in a results list on Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo, or by sales leads. Bottomline: you convert a nonproductive expenditure into an asset.

Second, you have expanded your resources for maintaining a more effective online presence. Instead of leaving the Web site to chance, you have a tech resource, a librarian, and a teacher. These individuals don't have to be employees. Part time or project work will deliver results. In short, you are no longer the bottleneck or the manager who is too busy with more pressing matters to leverage your Web site.

Finally, with these changes you will have taken an important step toward making your Web site a platform. You can add other functions such as a Web log, news feeds to add content to your Web site, or make the lead to social computing via third party components like Groups from Google or commnity services from Ning.com.

In today's economic climate, a Web site is the most flexible and scalable form of marketing. Exploit your Web presence.

You can get more of Mr. Arnold's software insights from his new study written in collaboration with Martin White. Successful Enterprise Search Management is available now from Galatea in the UK. http://www.galatea.co.uk.