This past week CharTec hosted the first Academy of 2016, and what was really interesting to us was that most of our marketing sessions were redirected to chats regarding effective websites.

In fact, we had a record number of attendees schedule 30-minute sessions during Academy with our Marketing Director and Account Manager to receive a brief analysis of their company’s website.  To us, this isn’t just an indicator that websites are an area of concern for our members; it’s a large, flashing neon sign pointing straight towards the digital storefront.

Because of this, we plan to create more educational material centered on effective websites—from Academy sessions and whitepapers to webinars and useful tools.  And let’s start right here, right now, with this very blog.  Here’s a simple rundown of how to give yourself a quick website analysis.

Homepage

Everything starts with the homepage.  It’s your first impression, and because of this, it’s incredibly important that your homepage isn’t confusing, annoying, or outdated.

Look at the first major headline.  Do you even have one?  Or is it a glob of text hosted on multiple sliders?  And if you do have a headline, what does it say about your company?

In less than 10 words, you should say exactly what it is your business does—not how great you do it or how fabulous your staff is.  What do you do for your clients? What problem do you solve?  If you aren’t sure how to do this, then take a look at Buffer’s website or the website of payment processor, Square.

This is Buffer’s headline: A better way to social media.

This is Square’s headline: Start selling today.

Simple. Straightforward. Customer focused.  And… impactful.  That is the key.

Now, obviously there’s a lot more to a homepage than just the first headline, and we plan to dig into that in future whitepapers.  But, to get you started, you need to look for three important things:

  1. Is your homepage mobile friendly?
  2. Do you have noticeable call to actions?
  3. Are your services clearly displayed?

Navigation

Many of our members struggle to lock down their navigation.  They choose 12 different core solutions and a million separate pages on “who we are”, “what we do”, “why we’re better”, and “all about us.”

This is all wrong.

The simpler, the better, and in this case, less truly is more.  If you have all these different products and all this valuable real estate talking about how great you think you are, then you’re failing to make a positive impression to any person who lands on your site.  Basically, it’s information overload—you’re giving the consumer too much to dig through, and as a result, they won’t dig through anything.

Our web developer goes through a simple process to narrow down the navigation of a website, and it literally is nothing more than a flow chart.  But, by golly, when we’re done creating a website, it looks fantastic.  It’s easy to read, easy to maneuver through, and easy to take what you need from it.

If you really do have 12 different core solutions, do your very best to narrow those down to six at the very most.  You can lump together two or three or eliminate solutions from your website that are typically add-on’s for your clients.

Also, you don’t exactly need more than one page dedicated to your greatness.  Take all the extra “stuff” out because, really, you’re the only one that wants it there.

Unfortunately, we can’t go on forever.  There really is so much more to this whole website thing like SEO, graphics, copy, landing pages, blogging, client portals, site hosting, and so on.  And not to mention, your website deals a lot with experimenting with what works and what doesn’t work.  So in the next few weeks, look forward to a more in-depth whitepaper on website creation.  If you want to make sure you’re the first on the list to get it, then shoot us an email, and we’d be happy to put you on this list.