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Now that you’ve done some planning for your business, determining the projects you want to work on and the niche you will be serving, let’s take a look at your website. Is it in alignment with your goals for 2009? When was the last time you gave it a little freshening up?

If it’s been more than 3 years since your last website makeover, you should seriously consider re-vamping your website. Here are some things you should take a look at:

1. What is the purpose of your website?
Is it currently serving that purpose? There are lots of reasons to have a website, in fact many business owners have different websites to serve these different purposes. So, why do you have a website? Once you know that answer, make sure your website serves that why.
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Search engines love blogs, and they love WordPress blogs in particular. According to the WordPress Codex:

“WordPress, straight out of the box, comes ready to embrace search engines. Its features and functions guide a search engine through the posts, pages, and categories to help the search engine crawl your site and gather the information it needs to include your site within its database.”

I know from personal experience that people have found my blogs before I’ve even added much content.
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As some of you may know, I’m in the midst of moving to a new home. It’s only a couple of buildings over, so we didn’t need to rent a truck or hire movers, but it does mean we are making use of the two-week overlap between homes to move. That is why I didn’t quite get around to posting something last Monday. In fact, as I write this (on a Sunday), I’m sitting in a room that only has my desk and computer in it. All my stuff is already settled into my new office — but the Internet won’t be turned on there until Monday (tomorrow for me, today for you … isn’t WordPress’s scheduling feature handy?).

Anyway, because of the move and because of all the time I spent working on Turbo-Charge Your Marketing last week (www.marketingturbocharge.com/blog, I don’t really have much time to write this week’s post. So, I pulled one out from one of my guest speakers, Alicia M. Forest. I hope you like it.

5 Simple Steps to a Website That Makes Sales

By Alicia Forest

Is your website producing leads for you or is it just sitting out there in cyberpace looking pretty? Obviously, you want your website to work for you to generate leads and make sales, not just be a pretty brochure for your business.

Here are 5 simple ways you can make your website make more sales for you.
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There are a lot of websites out there that offer free and paid website templates. Templates are great, for they can save you a lot of effort and time when you want to create a new layout for your website. In fact, I used a template to create the design for this website — though I personalized it quite a bit.

There is a downside to using template, however. A lot of people make mistakes in the process of choosing and using a web template and end up with something that was unlike the image they had in mind. Here are some guidelines to help you avoid those mistakes.

Uniqueness Is Important
The first obvious mistake you should be aware of is using a template that is very popular — and not customizing it in any way. If many people use the same template, your website will not appear unique at all and your credibility as a solid, different website will be tarnished. In other words, you will appear generic just like your next-door neighbors.
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Your website is the hub of your online business; it is the virtual representation of your company whether your company exists physically or not. When you are doing business online, people cannot see you physically like they could if they were dealing with an offline company. And the darn thing about human nature is that, people will judge you by your covers. And this is where good web design comes in.

Imagine if you are running an offline company. Would you allow your salespersons to dress in shabby clothes when they are dealing with your customers? By making your staff dress professionally, you are telling your customers that you care about quality. This works simply because first impressions matter.

The same case can be made with your website. If your website is put together shabbily and looks like a 5 minute “quick fix”, you are literally shouting to your visitors that you are not professional and you do not care for quality.
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