Using the Facebook plugins is only one of way of allowing your customers to connect with both you and other customers. Todd Sullivan says another is making sure you’re doing enough to foster a community online.
Most businesses have already set up Facebook pages. Now is the time to improve on that by actually engaging the users you have on those pages through discussion and other types of involvement.
“I think for mainstream businesses, the focus is shifting from just ‘having a social media presence’ to using those channels to engage with potential customers in unique ways. Once you’ve got over the initial hype of having “x” number of followers, you realise the much more important metric is engagement.”
“I think the problem for most businesses is that serious engagement in social media is a full-time job, so 2011 should about maximum engagement for minimum effort.”
Hal Pritchard says this can be accomplished by integrating social media through your ecommerce platform. For example, businesses can create social plugins on a page for a particular product.
“If you buy it, or “like” it on Facebook, their friends will be able to see it and you’ll have some interconnection between users through eCommerce. That’s a big trend this year.”
Wilde says allowing users to connect through sharing purchases, along with other ways to connect through discussions in comments and so on, will keep your business unique among competition.
“Sharing purchases is good, along with allowing your users to share their interests and comment on the content on your site is good. That’s an area that’s going to expand even more this year.”
Talk to any SEO webmaster and they’ll usually say that creating plenty of links is a great way to get your site noticed in Google. The more links, or “doorways”, into your site, the more opportunities people have to visit it.
OzScopes chief executive Wai Hong Fong says businesses need to start spreading as many links as they can through social media sites, but doing so in a way that adds content. Whether it’s showing off a discount, or a new blog post, it is crucial to make sure those links are getting out there.
“The links used on sites like Facebook and Twitter have been known to drive up these rankings. Google knows how to define actual accounts, they have their own algorithms for looking at the ratio of followers to following in Twitter, etc.”
“This occurred in 2010 and there’s going to be much, much more of it in 2011. The social world is bigger, and it’s something that Google wants to do well. Now is the time to do social, and do social well.”
Sometimes improving your website means going back to basics. Jim Stewart from Stewart Media says businesses that haven’t been using Google Webmaster Tools really need to start, as the interface gives them plenty of information they can’t get from Google Analytics.
“The big thing businesses need to be looking at is using Google Webmaster Tools to get analytical data. Many use just analytics, but they don’t use webmaster tools to find out what Google is doing with their site.”
“You can find out a whole bunch of information on there, including where Google finds certain errors with your links, and so on.”
And if you want to promote your business as an expert in the field, and are creating different content on a blog to do that, Stewart says using the WebMaster Tools will help you find out who’s sharing your content, allowing you to keep producing the more popular pages.
“This is a great way to check out what’s happening to your content in the ecosystem, because it will tell you who’s picked up your content, who’s sharing it, and so on.”
It’s been said for months businesses need to be setting up their mobile sites. But with smartphones now becoming the norm, Lisa Taliana says all businesses need to start making their sites more compatible as “people are viewing websites more and more on portable devices rather than a desktop”.
She also warns businesses need to check their traffic stats and figure out which devices are viewing their sites most often.
“Speak to your developer about this. It’s not a simple procedure for the novice. More and more businesses are realising the need to make their websites device compatible.”
“You’ll be amazed at the number of smartphones viewing your site. Then look at how long they were on your site for. It wouldn’t be long, so adapt your site to suit these users.”
Justus Wilde says businesses shouldn’t be tempted into creating apps – they are often sub-par if not given the correct amount of time and resources and can often damage your brand, especially if they’re lost in the fray. He says instead your site should be “device agnostic”.
“Mobile is a big area, we’ve seen particularly in the eCommerce space, I have clients that say they have 2% of their traffic coming from those areas.”
“If you’re transacting online, or have any sort of website that has a conversion point like a form, or anything like that, you’ll find the consumer rates are a lot lower on mobile traffic, and that may be because they don’t have optimised alternatives.”
Web development has nearly turned full circle. Websites were originally very bare and contained little information, and then in the early 2000s started morphing into information portals that contained everything and anything.
Now, the trend have turned towards simplicity, driven to some extent by Google’s instant preview function, which allows users to preview a website from the search results page. Taliana warns businesses to make their home pages as clutter-free as possible, making sure the business’s name and purpose is clearly displayed above all else.
“Clean up your website. De-clutter. Just as you would your own office space. It’s time to work out what’s relevant and what’s not working for you.”
Most designers would recommend some sort of content slider on your home page to keep things simple. These are windows that move every few seconds to give viewers an idea of what’s in your site without having to clutter your front page with different articles.
These experts say you should also keep a consistent theme throughout your site, along with a colour scheme. Minimising the information thrown at the viewer, along with providing a consistent design, will go a long way to making your site appear memorable.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
