What’s the measure by which you gauge the success of your website(s)?

I hope your answer was clear: it’s “website response & interaction”.

If you have a nice looking website, pretty graphics and easy navigation with pretty product pictures and descriptions, you may have only reached 20% of your goals of winning online.

If you have spent 10′s of thousands of dollars on all of it, and that’s all you have – it’s not  a great place to be.

You will need to change up the response and interaction with your website.

The entire process begins with asking important questions.

You can retrofit this into an existing site too.

Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives. -William A Foster

So, how do you determine website quality?

From the top, you have to think about these two things (and then drill down to the 7 questions below):

1. What do they expect to find? (get into their heads – and think about this question)
2. Then, what is your site (specific pages) actually saying? Does the message match the request?

First impressions can make or break your chances of “hooking” your visitor into staying in the first place — and then returning for that all-important second visit.  Your visitors may never get to know you because they’re horrified by the big fuzzy dice hanging up in your window.  They expected understated elegance and you gave them tacky neon diner.  Or they were looking for bold and cheerful, and you gave them muted and repressed.

So it’s not enough to make sure your site delivers good content:  Visually, it’s also important to connect emotionally and let them know you’re able to deliver what they expect to find.

Take a moment to look at your site right now.  Ask yourself the following questions:

• “Do my site colors help set the mood I want to set… or do they clash?
• “Are there any unnecessary graphics that might distract my visitor from my message?”
• “Are there any graphics that unwittingly convey a different message than the one I think I’m sending?
• “Does my front page really grab my visitor with the message I want her to hear?  Does it get to the point — her point?” (demographics)
• “Do I sabotage myself by displaying links, tabs or ads on my front page that takes her right out of my site?”
• “Is my content powerful?  Relevant?  Current?  Fresh?  Recently updated? Have you checked your most beneficial keywords to conversion & ratios?”
• “Do I have an “About” page (with current information, photos, videos and ‘upsell’ messages) that builds confidence?”

Try to put yourself in your visitor’s shoes.  What is she really going to find, when she arrives at your site?

If you have a webmaster helping you, write these things down in an excel sheet, or use an online tool. Share this with your team, friends, networks (if you’re comfortable) – and let your webmaster know. Start by making small changes to the most critical pages (which you can find by analyzing your web analytics).

What do you think?

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