Page 39 - 2016 December Voices
P. 39
Weekly Website Checks The Psychology of Visitors
All pages are loading without errors Visitors come to club websites with
Check all forms to ensure they are working properly certain expectations - they want to know
Review and resolve any issues with emails sent from quickly (within 10 - 15 seconds) whether
the web server the club meeting fits within their schedule,
Check and remove spam comments, form submissions if the members look friendly, what type
and user accounts of a group is it (fun, serious, professional,
Check that member email addresses are current casual), and what makes your club different
Check for any broken links from the one down the street.
Check for 404 errors and resolve these by fixing links Most people won’t follow links unless
or redirecting absolutely forced to. The perceived
Marketing: Update front page with current club news information must be so compelling that
Check social media links to/from website they must take that next step.
Monthly Website Checks In eye-tracking studies conducted in
Review security scans and resolve any issues 2008, people were found to scan (not
Review website statistics. What is your most popular read) from left to right, then down the
content? What is your least popular? Where are visitors page in a diagonal line to the left bottom
coming from? What is your best conversion source? corner and then across to the right bottom
Tweak your content to suit corner, creating a “Z” pattern. Anything not
Spellcheck and audit content for readability on those points is considered secondary
Review your local search visibility information. Additionally, small, fuzzy
Marketing: send an update to your email list pictures were ignored. Large, high quality
pictures, of ordinary people looking directly
Quarterly Website Checks into the camera caused the visitor to linger
Review website – what could be improved? on the page for about 5 seconds. That’s
Web Graphics and photos – are these up to date? Could nearly a third of the time someone visits
they be improved to be more current? your webpage! Large blocks of text were
Check your website content – what is dated and what ignored. Floating messages were also
could be improved? ignored.
Review and tweak meta title and meta description tags And speaking of expectations, the
Test the website to ensure that it looks and displays Toastmasters 2011 brand is very familiar.
properly on the most popular browsers and mobile TI has done an excellent job of acquainting
devices the general public with the logo, colors,
Validate your site. (CSS/HTML, Accessibility, and tagline of the organization.
Mobile-friendly) Imagine the poor visitor who lands on
Review and adjust website advertising campaigns a website, purported to be a Toastmasters
Yearly Website Checks club page, and finds no branding or old
branding. Their radar goes up, and they
Update the copyright date in your website footer and have to determine whether it’s a “fake”
in any other references website or whether the club is defunct.
Review each page of the site for content accuracy When faced with unmet expectations,
Renew your website domains name(s) visitors will opt to leave your page in under
Review your website strategy to align with your club 3 seconds.
goals
To learn more about sprucing up
your web page, join us for the
Website Wizardry webinar on
January 24, 2017.
VOLUME 3 ISSUE 6 DECEMBER, 2016 39
