kinetik IT blog spot

Depending on how recently you’ve been to the doctor for a checkup, you may or may not have noticed that there are essentially two steps to figuring out how healthy you are: First, there is an interview and/or questionnaire, and then you usually get a series of short tests.

By studying the results, your physician can get a fairly accurate picture of what’s going on with your body and make appropriate recommendations.

Believe it or not, you can follow the very same process with your business website to keep it fit, active, and healthy for a long time to come. Given the amount of money you probably spent to get your web presence in the first place, doesn’t it make sense to ensure that it’s operating as it should be – both as a piece of software and as a marketing tool?

Here’s how you can think like a doctor and assess your website’s health and fitness:

Begin by Looking for First Impressions

Just as your visit to the physician begins with an interview, your inspection of your website should start with a quick look around. How is the layout? Are the visuals in good shape? Is information about your company and/or products up to date, and are all your links working?

More often than not, this quick “eyeball test” will tell you much of what you need to know. Perhaps your website is looking old, tired, and out of shape. That might be a sign you’re due for a redesign. Or, if something looks a little fishy, you might need to update your hosting software and check for viruses.

Either way, you shouldn’t skip this important step. Looking through your website at least once a week is a great way to cut off problems before they develop.

Continue by Going Deeper with Tests

Just as your doctor will draw a little bit of blood to make sure things are going well inside your body, it’s a good idea to dig deeply into your web analytics package now and then to figure out what’s going on beneath the layer of HTML on your website, too.

In the same way that vitamin deficiencies are easy to spot under a microscope, a quick scan of your most important traffic sources, content viewed, and bounce rates should tell you which parts of your site are “hot” and which ones aren’t working or converting as well as they could be.

The beauty of studying analytics is that you can sometimes get access to insights that wouldn’t have been otherwise obvious. That’s especially true if your website looks great but isn’t doing much to contribute to your bottom line. A few simple numbers and graphs might be able to show you exactly why.

A healthy website, like a healthy body, requires continual attention and maintenance. A fit and healthy website is something that helps your business grow and grow. A web presence that’s not fit, however, is a waste of time and money. Remember that and be sure to check its appearance and performance regularly.

Using discounts to attract customers, or at least boost sales in the short term, is probably one of the oldest tricks in any marketer’s book. It's such an easy and obvious tactic that anyone should be able to use it to boost revenue in a heartbeat… right?

That's mostly true, but there is a problem with the "sale pricing" system that a lot of companies are discovering in the digital age – namely, that if you have sales too often, customers will stop buying at times when you aren't having a sale. In other words, buyers quickly learn that there's no reason to pay full price if they know another discount is right around the corner.

You see this frequently when businesses start inventing holidays as an excuse to discount their prices, or when a certain "last-chance" offer comes around again and again. In those situations, there is no reason for a potential buyer to pay any attention. After all, even if they don't buy now, another discount or occasion is sure to be right around the corner. The last chances never seem to end.

How do you avoid this kind of problem in your own business? The easiest way is to simply schedule your sales and discounts well in advance, and to make sure that you aren't having more than a few a year. Additionally, you should ensure that when you make a "last-chance" offer to customers, it's really the genuine article.

Discounts might be good for boosting sales, but they can also kill your long-term profitability if you don't think carefully about when, how, and why you discount. Keep that in mind before your sale prices become permanent.