Put Your Website to the Test with our Graded Checklist.

By John Corbett, Meetinghouse, Inc.

You put a lot of work into your website, how can you make sure that your Qualified Ready Prospect will visit your website and read your carefully crafted message? You can't let your website baffle or annoy either your Prospect or the Search Engines who can bring her or him there. Your Prospect is a busy professional who doesn't like to have to work extra hard to get information. The Search Engines are your willing allies, but only if you comply with their simple but unwritten rules. To be productive, your website must conform to the preferences of these two masters. To see how your home page measures up, test it using the 100 point checklist we use ourselves to evaluate client websites for relevance, transparency and Search Engine compliance:

1. Does it tell your Prospect W.I.I.F.M. ("What's In It For Me")?  If not, what is the big secret? Give your Ready Prospect a reason to stick around. Do the first three or four sentences (or less), sum up your unique proposition and benefits? Do these sentences use the basic keywords that the Search Engines need to know in order to refer your Prospect? Can your visitor see all or most of this without having to move the scroll bar?   Tell me "W.I.I.F.M." and take 20 points.
   
   
2. Does your website encourage your Ready Prospect to take action?  Does it suggest specific action (order a catalog, make a phone call, submit information) and does it furnish right to hand the means to fulfill it (phone number, order form, email etc.)?  Call to action, take 8 points.
   
   
3. Does your website furnish complete contact information at the top of every page?  That makes it easy and efficient for your visitor, if is all that she or he came for.  Easy access to contact information, take 6 points.
   
   
4. Are the pages most important to your Ready Prospect directly accessible from the top of the home page?  If not, why hide them? A home page link also makes your subsidiary page more important to the Search Engines. Can your Prospect see the most important without having to move the scroll bar?   Access to important page links, take 10 points.
   
   
5. Is the visitor's access to your home page interupted by an "introductory" splash page?  If so, why is it necessary to make your Ready Prospect jump through an extra hoop to see your website? What does your home page lack that the splash page is providing?  Spare us the splash page and take 4 points.
   
   
6. Does your website use a clean, open, easy to look at design?  Does it avoid hard to see text/background combinations such as text over images, over patterns or over similar hued backgrounds? Staring at crowded and complicated web pages on a computer monitor is stressful. Furnishing graceful, relaxed page design can help to make your message stand out more easily for your Ready Prospect.  Easy to read, take 8 points.
   
   
7. Does your visitor have to disable or mentally block out hyperkenetic visual distractions in order to get your message?  Motion features (flash programs, animated gifs or fast cycling slide shows) may be clever, but many visitors find them annoying so use them carefully. They can waste the visitor's time and make it difficult to concentrate on your message. Consider leaving them off, giving visitors the option to see them run if they have the time and inclination.  No distractions, no motion, easy to look at, take 4 points.
   
   
8. Is your website message available in text, coded entirely in pure, wholesome, unframed HTML? Go ahead and ask your webmaster. If it is framed, or in flash or if the text is presented as an image, then the Search Engines may not be able to read it in full or to refer your Prospect to your website. These formats may look nice, but are they worth sacrificing Search Engine referrals for? Is a beautiful website still a beautiful website if nobody sees it?  All search engine compliant text formats, take 20 points.
   
   
9. Is your website "tagged" for the Search Engines?  Does it have the "tags" and other content required by the Search Engines to make your website relevant for your Ready Prospect's keyword request? By "tags", we specifically don't mean hidden "metatags". We specifically do mean the well established although uncodified and ever changing set of rules which specifies how keywords should be used in text.  Complete and correct Search Engine tags, take 20 points.
   
   

If you scored over 100 (with bonus points), congratulations! If your website scored under 100, the good news is that there is room for improvement. Make the indicated changes and your website will produce more qualified leads. Building a productive website is not necessarily more work and expense than building an unproductive one. Sometimes it is a lot less when expensive coding and design is used to little or to negative effect. The difference can be just a matter of asking the right questions.

Let us furnish you with a detailed, accurate snapshot of your website's performance and to present a proven effective remedial plan.  Includes our 100 point system for evaluating your website.

How to get more free web traffic referrals from the Search Engines.  Qualified Visitors are indispensable to a productive website. Read our Search Engine "whitepaper" for some Don'ts and Do's for drawing more qualified traffic to your website.

Do the Visitors Visit but never call? Better web design can produce more qualified leads. Here are some Don'ts and Do's for converting a Visitor to a Qualified Lead.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John M. Corbett is president of Meetinghouse Enterprises, Inc., a website consulting and hosting company serving the needs of the architectural preservation and custom building specialists exclusively. He has written numerous published articles about working with the artisans on design issues. He also consults with publishers on building web traffic to their websites. Before Meetinghouse, he worked for 30 years as a preservation tradesman, owning and operating his own steeplejack company.

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