What does your web site say about your business? The reality today is that your web site represents your entire company, and visitors make judgments about your business based on their impression of your web site. Often, businesses focus on creating a professional image, which of course is vitally important for making a good first impression. But what is often overlooked is the value of web site usability, which can be even more important to your online success.

We’ve all seen web sites that look great, but the important information is buried, unclear, or just plain missing. Most users will spend a few minutes attempting to find what they are looking for, but then abandon the site to find another that is easier to use. Making sure your site is usable is like a gift to your visitors that pays back rewards in customer satisfaction and a positive user experience. If visitors like your site and find it easy to use, they will come back.

When designing or re-designing your company web site, visitor satisfaction should be the guiding principle. A good, consistent navigation system is essential for any web site, especially sites with a lot of pages. Use a common menu system on all pages and include drop-downs or sub-categories if necessary. Make sure your visitors can get to any page on your site, yet find their way back “home” easily. Keep your navigation design to only two or three levels deep, and always include a site map. The end result will be visitors who can find their way around your web site and get to the information they need quickly and easily.

Sometimes, businesses find they have differing goals for their web sites, depending on which department you talk to. Goals range from “make the investors happy” to “meet the deadline no matter what” and everything in between. Although these are things you probably have to consider, keep the goal focused on the user experience and it will pay off in the end.

Paying attention to your web site’s usability adds enormous value. The advantages to a web site development process that incorporates usability standards results in fewer problems or “bugs,” and increases customer satisfaction when your site goes live. It all comes down to the end-user experience, the ultimate test for a successful, useful, and profitable web site.

Having a local web strategy is an important part of your company’s overall search engine strategy, but don’t wait too long to take action. The web is already the tool of choice for most shoppers today, and your company needs to be where the customers are – on the web.

The latest trend in web search is called “Local Search,” which helps connect people and places in local communities. For businesses, it’s a great way to reach customers close to home.

Customers today use search engines, online business directories, review sites, online communities, and follow links from other web sites or click on ads in order to find local businesses. This means there are many opportunities available for you to advertise your business on the web and target the local shoppers in your own geographic area.

Older types of advertising such as newspapers and paper Yellow Pages books are losing popularity with consumers, while online advertising is growing very rapidly. A recent report by Borrell Associates predicts that by the end of 2007, local online advertising will grow by 31 percent to $7.7 billion, and local paid search will grow by 86 percent to $1.8 billion. If you want your business to be found locally by the people in your community, you need to be found online!

Many small businesses think that search engines like Google and Yahoo are the key to online success. But unless you have your web site professionally optimized to perform well in the search engines, it’s pretty unlikely that you will see much in the way of search engine results. Local search and local advertising, however, provide you with a variety of opportunities where you stand a much better chance of being found by the shoppers who are already looking for you – on the web.

Remember the phrase “Build it, and they will come…” ? Well, that may be true for baseball fields in the movies, but it’s certainly not the case for web sites! In order to bring traffic to your web site, you are going to need the help of the web’s most used resource – Search Engines – and their “itsy bitsy spiders.”

There are many search engines on the web, and they all use different methods of gathering and indexing web site information. The most important search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask, account for about 75% of all internet searches, while a handful of smaller search engines are responsible for the remaining 25%. The biggest obstacle to getting your site into a #1 position, though, is the sheer number of competing web sites out there. Think about it, of all the millions of web sites on the internet, how can you make your site come up first in the list? Or in some cases, the question may be how can you make your site show up at all?

Well, it’s not an exact science, but by understanding more about how search engines work, and understanding the importance of search engine spiders, you can improve your chances of getting noticed by the search engines.

Be Nice to Spiders
Search engines send out “spiders” (also called “bots”) that look for new information on the web, and they collect as much information as possible in the shortest amount of time possible. Since they are in such a hurry, your web site needs to be friendly and inviting, providing the spider with exactly what it is looking for, which is web site text (content), lots of links, and clean HTML code.

The search engine then takes all of the information the spider gathered and analyzes it to determine how “important” your web site is (in their opinion, of course). Then, when a visitor types in a search term, the search engine displays results in order of importance, based on the information gathered by the spider. Depending on how important the search engine thinks your site is, your web site may or may not be displayed in the search results.

Food for Thought – and Spiders
So you can see how important it is that your web site be spider-friendly in order to have any chance of showing up in the search engine results. To be successful, you must feed the spiders what they want the most – good content, abundant links, and clean code. The words people use when they search – often called keywords – ultimately determine which web sites are displayed when a search engine finds sites that match those keywords, and all of it is based on what those little spiders said about your web site!

So be very careful with what you “feed” the spiders, it could mean the difference between good search engine positions, and not showing up in the search results at all.

If you’re a small business, you may think that branding is just a luxury that only the “big guys” have. But even the smallest of businesses must have consistent branding in order to be successful, and it’s not really a luxury but more of a necessity if you want your business to thrive and grow.

Branding your business does not have to be expensive, either, although it’s a good idea to invest in having some of the basic elements designed by a professional, such as your logo and your web site. Beyond that, the most important branding that you can do is to be consistent with every piece of communication you touch. For instance:

• Put your logo on everything – business cards, letterhead, your web site, invoices, advertisements, email signatures, and every piece of marketing collateral that you produce.
• Stick with a consistent color palette – if your corporate colors are shades of blue and gray, don’t send out something that’s lime green and orange just because it’s trendy.
• The same goes for fonts – make sure your company name and information always appears in the same font. Save the fancy fonts for headlines or other parts of the marketing piece.
• The quality of your marketing materials (business cards, web design, etc.) is a direct reflection of the professionalism of your business, so don’t attempt to “do-it-yourself” unless you’re sure the result will be credible.

Another key element to successfully branding your business is reinforcing your message through all of your business communications. A slogan or “tag line” can help with that. (For example, if you need to buy insurance, where will you be “in good hands”?) Make sure that the tone of your writing conveys the underlying message you want to send, and is consistent with the overall impression of your business that you want the public to have. If you are “the company that cares,” say so in all of your communications across all channels.

Establishing your brand is a necessary part of building your business, no matter how big or how small it is. Branding will not only help people remember your business, but also make it easier for them to understand the nature of what you do and why they should pay attention. Branding is your corporate identity, so make sure your brand sends the right message to the right people in everything you say and do for your business.

Many small businesses are busy with day-to-day activities with no time left over to create a marketing plan to follow. Well, summer is a great time to put together a plan that will help build your company’s image and provide guidelines for marketing your business for the second half of 2006.

Step 1: Determine Your Value Proposition
What makes you better and more valuable to your customers than the competition? What is your major selling advantage? How do you solve the problems facing your customers? Write down the answers to these questions, then write a summary of them. Try to narrow in on your value proposition until it is a concise statement of 1 or 2 sentences.

Step 2: Create a Brand Identity for Your Business
All of your marketing and promotional materials should have a consistent look and feel, and also have a consistent message. Logos are important; if you don’t have one, consider having a professional create one for you. Also think about coming up with a tag line or slogan.

Step 3: Develop Your Web Site
It is an expectation today that even small businesses have a company web site. Visitors must be able to quickly find information about your company, where it is located, and how to contact you for more information. It’s okay to start small and add features and content as your business grows, but make sure you have a professional, useful web site available as soon as you can.

Step 4: Create a Marketing Kit
We are all familiar with the standard “leave-behind” brochure, but for small businesses it can be an expensive investment that becomes outdated very quickly. A more useful approach may be to create a marketing “kit” as an alternative. Try using a regular manila file folder with a color label on it that has your company name, logo, and slogan. Then add an introduction letter, a data sheet of products and services, a press release, a short biography or history, a current company newsletter, and any other collateral that makes sense for your business. This way, your information is “file-cabinet-ready” instead of ready for the “circular file,” making it more likely to be read and saved.

Step 5: Promote and Advertise
Map out a plan to do something each week (or month) to help promote your business. Send out press releases, sponsor community events, and place ads in local newspapers or industry magazines. It takes approximately six impressions before a customer will begin to remember your company and what it does. Be creative – think of ways to be visible and active in your community, and don’t forget to look for opportunities on the web, too.