The task of building the perfect website is an ongoing one. Continuous monitoring, tweaking and updating is the only way to ensure your site is the very best it can be.

Here are ten tips to improve your website…

1. Understand the customer – sounds simple but so many people get it wrong.

Get all your great products together with a clearly defined and communicated brand message and you’re on to a winner!

2. Make finding things easy – some sites are just so damn complicated!

Provide easy to use, fast and accurate search facilities as standard. Ensure that navigation is simple and easy to use – no hidden or difficult to find buttons or tabs.

3. Once you have their interest why not show them what else they want?

Upsell, cross-sell, showcase promotions, offers, best sellers and new products. A sure fire way to increase basket size and average order values is to show similar or slightly better products at the checkout.

4. Understand your performance.

Use analytic tools to ascertain what’s going on with your site. The information gathered could unlock areas for additional marketing, enhanced usability or missed opportunities to tap into.

5. Let them see all you have to offer.

Use rich imaging (a fancy way of saying zoom and alternative views) with professional, clear photographs throughout.

6. Tell them what you have to offer.

Make the words on your site interesting and engaging to your target audience as well as optimised for good search engine rankings. Don’t bore them with drawn out technical specs and data which could be summarised in a table elsewhere.

7. When you offer help – give it.

Don’t you just hate the little button that says ‘Sizes Explained’ (or something equally promising) that then links to a nightmare table of numbers with no explanation or help in sight?

8. Get the customer to tell you you’re good.

Positively encourage your customers to leave and publish reviews.

9. Offer other information options.

Newsletters, promotional emails, catalogues or store information should be offered for those who want it. You could make a regular customer instead of a one off sale!

10. Offer something different.

In a world where everyone has a store online being different to the competition will help your site stick in the mind of the customer and could make the difference between a sale or not. Check out your competition and see what you could do better.

With many companies, organisations and individuals generating new content all the time it is worth taking the time to see how each may improve the way you do business, research or networking online.

In this post I have attempted to catalogue some of the many sources I have found useful in my role researching and advising companies at uknetweb on the possibilities presented by Web 2.0.

Some of the links refer to other list blogs cataloging the best of the web, others are my own selections and some are link to directories I found useful when browsing the web.

Free Useful Software

Open Office – Why pay for MS Office when you can get most of the functionality for free with Open Office?

A suite of software with programs offering many of the functions found within the Microsoft Office Suite. Worth downloading and playing around with – it works across operating systems and platforms . (The Draw program is particularly useful for preparing flowcharts and process models.) If you’re interested how these programs are free – click here.

Open Workbench – Specifically for Project Managers

Similar to OpenOffice this is a program for Project Managers available as a Free Full Download. This neat little bit of software has all the functions to make a project run according to plan and timescales.

Free Online Applications and Downloads

Flock – Manage the Web 2.0 World

Already the subject of one of my past entries I am still loving the functionality of Flock, an alternative version of the Firefox browser system. The Flock browser brings together all of your social networks, bookmarking sites, picture sites, blogs, rss feeds and much much more.

WordPress – More than just a blog site!

WordPress is one of many free blogging systems available free of charge on the web. With loads of functionality in the hosted or download ble versions this great piece of open source content management software makes it easy to publish anything online. Try it out to see what I mean.

Slideshare.net – Get presenting to the World.

I first used Slideshare to publish a presentation given by my MD to a local Chamber of Commerce (click here to view – E-commerce 2008 and Beyond). I never intended Slideshare to be anything more than a convenient place to host presentations for interested parties to download; however, on the first morning after uploading we received 65 viewers from across the globe.

Ning.com – Host your own network

If you’re getting bored of using other social networking sites, Ning.com provides a great location to host your own network. Featuring many of the functions you’d expect to find on other social network sites, Ning gives you control over the name, content and style of your own network. Desktoptwo – The Desktop that travels with you. A handy little online environment featuring a range of online applications accessible through one secure online virtual desktop. Features 1gb of free storage.

The Best Lists

The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives

The title says it all – Packed with links to useful software that gives you the opportunity to put two fingers up at our dear friend – the Big Mr.G.

25 Firefox Extensions to make you more productive

If you have switched to Firefox or Flock this list features a host of add-ons / extensions that make your day that little bit more productive. Warning: you might not like the results of MeeTimer – an add on that identifies where you spend your time online – splitting it into neat sections which include; ‘procrastination’.

ReadWriteWeb – List of Web 2.0 Lists

As it says this is a list of the best lists of Web 2.0 applications, this is a veritable list bonanza!

All Things Web 2.0 – Top 100 Top Rated

This is a link to a directory of the Top 100 (Top Rated) Web 2.0 resources. Navigate the site to find apps etc listed by top recommendations, number of users or category. Really useful site to keep up to date with the latest developments on Web 2.0.

I hope you find these useful. If you have any of your own suggestions please let me know and I’ll get them up here as soon as I can.

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