It’s your portrait to the world, your calling card, your virtual catalog. It’s your website and it has to do plenty of heavy lifting day in and day out. But is it up to the task? Is it attracting the kind of customers you want with effectiveness in converting sales? And what about shopping cart capability? Do you even have one? Perhaps you don’t need it for the type of products and services your company offers? These are essential questions for companies of all sizes. Today’s website requires greater sophistication than the basic static internet presence of years ago. So how can you gain prominence to the top of the search engines? Both organic and paid search along with blogging are the new promotional mediums of a highly ranking website. Are the web pages index-able? Can the search engine crawlers read the pages? Constantly refreshing your web site with new and compelling content, e-newsletters, specials, white papers, as well as reasons to come back to the site, should be paramount reasons for web designers to incorporate into the design. All this can be given in exchange for a viewer’s e-mail address. Will there be value in the information offered on your site or is it an obtuse advertisement. Working with a search engine analyst can guide you through the mire of darkness and impression less verbiage on a web site. What is it your clients are looking for on a site like yours? Sometimes the best answer is to ask your customers. Create a questionnaire with a reward or promotional thank you, for filling it out. Remember, knowledge is power and constructive feedback is invaluable.

Key Concerns upon evaluating a Website:

• Constantly rotate content and information on the site to keep it fresh and visitors coming back.

• Visit other sites as comparison and as to why they rank highly on the search engines.

• Provide reasons why a visitor should directly contact your company.

• Make your site as customer-friendly as possible. This may require customized software.

• Set up analytics tools and study the results.

A portion of this information was provided by Advantages Magazine. John Gallagher a promotional products distributor of custom printed mouse pads