I’ve looked at so many sites, more than I can remember and the majority of sites are very poorly constructed. Even the so called leading design firms around Sydney have some pretty ordinary coding standards however there are some that do create some well constructed sites too so it’s not all doom and gloom.

From an SEO perspective however I would say that 95% of sites need lots of work to even have a hope inthe search engine rankings. Web sites that were developed a couple of years ago often don’t stack up but that is to be expected since the technology and web standards have changed and are now much better.

My concern is that I still see so many brand new sites that have just launched and the site structual design is just not going to do them any favours at all for SEO. On many of these occassions the business owner doesn’t know this as they only know how it looks visually but can’t possibly understand what’s happening behind the scenes. It’s pretty sad when you have to tell a client who has just spent $$$ on a new website that significant parts of the site need to be redesigned and coded if they want any chance in the rankings.

With so much competition in the web design market it’s not hard for a business to end up with a less than perfect web site that is not going to perform other than looking pretty. My recommendation is get a firm that provides both SEO and web design services under the one roof and get them to explain why what they do works. Get them to show you some of their previous performance results in standards compliance and search engine rankings. If you want to be certain then get a second opinion from a reputable design firm as well.
Until next time…

Well that is great, however I recommend thinking very throughly about why you would want a web site. A good plan with clear goals can easily provide a ROI (return on investment) on a web site design that will pay for itself in a very short amount of time. I don’t see the cost of a web site as an expense, but rather as an investment because it can, if done correctly generate sales that you could never have otherwise made.

The key to making sure your website is performing at it’s best, is by measuring it. With many tools available today it is easy to track what your visitors do on your site, how they found you, what pages they viewed, how long they stayed, where they are from etc. Using these analytical tools, helps you to improve areas of your web site that are not performing. Tools like Google Adwords can help you find keyword phrases that provide conversions in a short amount of time providing you with valuable information for your natural SEO keyword targeting over the longer term. There is no point targeting keywords that don’t convert into sales, and it is better to find out that information earlier rather than later.

When your web designer finishes your website, it’s not really finished. I say this because a website will always need fresh content, monitoring for performance, small adjustments, and always require testing of variations of the pages to determine which page layouts perform better with your customers.

Follow these simple strategies and your website can perform better than you may have ever imagined.

More information about Improving Web Site Conversions can be found in an interesting article at Sitepoint.

The comedy club is owned by comedian Darren Sanders who just happens to be a good friend of ours and after recent discussions on a complete web design of the The Laugh Garage site, we are going to be designing a website that will feature some of the latest technolgy like video to give online users a first hand look at virtual comedy. We are still working out the finer details but it’s a project I’m looking forward to working with. Stay tuned for more about the Laugh Garage Comeday Club website.