Suze Bragg

So You Hate Your Web Site. Now What?
June 4, 2007

You spent a ton of money on your web site...and you hate it. Now what? How do you fix it without losing your shirt or hiring someone to overhaul it? Your web site is meant to inform, educate and entertain. If it doesn't "speak" to you--and you know your business best--then it won't speak to your customers either. When you're happy with what you see, you'll feel better about promoting it to others.

• How was your site built? If you used a package with templates, or a programmer who used style sheets, you can make changes easily. Select a new template until you find one that works, or have the programmer use different colors and layouts in his style sheets. If he/she coded it correctly, it is easy to do - trust me, I did this for a living.
• Change the copy. Instead of looking at it as an insurmountable task, break it up into small pieces. Write the front copy (keep it brief at about 100-200 words) over coffee, or dictate it into a tape recorder while you're running errands. Make a list of the pages you want to rewrite and tackle 1 page a day.
• Use different images. With digital cameras, you can take 100s and select the top 5-10 that work best. Grab someone that understands lighting to ensure your photos turn out ok. Don't think you have time? Grab a cup of coffee, your camera, and tour your building's floor while the lighting of the day is best, and start shooting. In 20 minutes you should have taken at least one or two usable images (that's a good start). Remember, for a web site, 72 dpi is recommended.
• Jot down a list of keywords. This is what people search for in the search engines and these are words you want to ensure are in your content. Have a co-worker or your teenager perform some searches in Google, Dogpile, MSN, Yahoo and AOL to see what words are the most popular. Once you have this information, consider buying some sponsored search listings. 

Posted by Suze Bragg on June 4, 2007 | Comments (0)