If you have a website and have found yourself wondering: What could make it better? There is one way to figure it out. Ask yourself:

If I were a visitor to my website, what would I be looking for that isn't there?

When visitors access certain types of sites, they have "expectations" that a few key elements will be available to them. Consider for a moment, a writer's website or a site promoting a musician (among other similar occupations). What visitors expect to see are things like:

• A Calendar - Where, when and how to get to the next venue where the person will be appearing.
• Sales - Could be books or CDs and for that matter, when was the last time you visited a musician's site that didn't offer one or two CDs for sale?
• Sample clips - Music clips certainly, and one or two enterprising authors have even includes short clips where they read their own materials.

But here are just two of the things I've done on such sites that turned out to be surprisingly effective:

• Include Full music tracks - Piracy fears? Take a hint: Not having full tracks available on a website is a performer's biggest liability. The most important visitors to a performer's website are not their fans...
• Head shots - Every performer I've ever met has at least one head shot; it's part of the business. Consider putting one (or more) along with a short bio and perhaps a couple of sample introductions on the site.

   Generic ideas:

Of course, not everyone is a performing artist. Here are some ideas that usually generate the proverbial "deer in the headlights" look.

• Credit card payments - For any service provider (and specialty or unique product sales as well). I've setup countless simple pages where a visitor can pay invoices online with a major credit card. Simple, easy and improves cash-flow.

• Form-based email - Before you say: I already have that on my site! Let me just note that a link that pops up an email program or form that can be left blank and will be processed if the "go" button is clicked - isn't an email form. Besides, a well-constructed email form can also act as a valuable survey your visitors will never realize they are taking!

• File distribution - Which can be anything from computer files, product data sheets, printable tips pages, information for specific clients or - whatever. 

Why not just use email? That's the wrong question! The real question is: Why use email?

Which is more time-efficient do you think?

• Composing a custom worded email for everyone asking for this-or-that file(s), finding the file(s) on your PC, them shipping the off OR -

• Saying: Well, if you just go to my website and ...

You never know when some service is going to strip your attachment or refuse to deliver it for size reasons. You can insure files get to you or your clients with either a File Distribution System with more bells and whistles than you can imagine or a custom File Packaging for use when there are too many files in a group to download one-by-one.

And, yes, I can set up your website so that you can even update the one/two file downloads whenever you need to change the information.

What else could you do? That is entirely up to you. If this sparked an idea, but you're not sure if it would work - send email and my quick opinion is free (and no strings attached).

Besides, the worst I can say is: No (and that's fairly rare).

The Contact page is waiting.

Return to the previous page