I had a friend Tim in my late teens who took excellent care of his 1981 Honda Civic. I had a zippy little red 1996 Honda Civic. Being a girl, I drove it and put petrol in it: period. Tim, however, took his to be serviced regularly, and sorted any niggly noises or quirks with the mechanic as soon as they arose. He kept the car going in excellent condition until he was 27, and then upgraded to a new car. My Honda, however, only lasted three years. When it finally gave up the ghost, the cost of repairing years of neglect was too high to justify. Needless to say, I now take my vehicle for regular servicing.

Regardless of the ‘make’ and ‘model’ of your website, every six months you should perform a health check. Sure, you may have recently had it optimised and be happy enough with the way it runs and appears on screen. But to get your site reaching its full potential, you should freshen it up regularly. Here are some tips of what to look for to have your website performing at its best.

Website Navigation

Spell it out for a customer, making it as easy as possible for them to navigate your site. It should be blindingly obvious how to locate information.

The best place for a navigation bar is at the top and/or left hand side of the page. This is logical to the eye as people read and easy to follow.

Make sure that you keep an image of your logo at the top of every page to reinforce what site people are on, and have the image linking back to the home page.

Make sure that there is a logical flow to the order of navigational links to the topics, sub-topics, and content.

Home Page

The home page is the first thing that people see when they visit your site. Like an old-fashioned English parlour reserved for entertaining guests, keep the home page pristinely polished.

• By the logo dominating the page, it should be obvious at a quick glance what page someone is on
• Tell people who you are and what you do. A brief few lines should explain the products/services that your company provides
• Minimise scrolling by keeping the home page smaller and more concise.
• Always include a call to action and promo of feature product/service on the home page

All About You

Having an About Us page personalises your company. You don’t need to share your life story, but do provide some background information.

• Share a brief history of your company overview. When and where was it founded?
• Include a mission statement of your business philosophy and goals
• If your business has grown from you and your spouse at the dining table to ten employees with an office in town, say so! People love an inspiring story.
• To humanise the website people are viewing, put up short biographies of your staff with a photo, describing their role and career history

The Contact Connection

The Contact Us page should always be up to date and easily accessible from every page within the site. This legitimises your business and makes people feel safer about trusting your site.

• Provide multiple contact options including phone, fax, email and web form
• If you have multiple departments, provide contact information for sales, the CEO, tech support, etc. Make it as easy as possible for people to get hold of you.
• If you business is locally operated, offer a map and details of your office hours

Perfecting Your Product Pages

If you are selling products, your website needs to be as convincing as a real live store for people to make decisions, and give them as much information as they would get from picking the item up by hand.

• Include images of the products you are selling. Offer enhanced views of close ups and different views to give the customer a wider perspective
• Mention the measurements of products
• Make sure that Buy Now button is obvious to the viewer and easy to use
• List and detail all the features and compare products where relevant

Help and FAQ Pages

It is important to provide a section offering help and answering Frequently Asked Questions to show that you care about making the customer’s experience as hassle free as possible. Whether these are questions about the industry your products relate to or shipping times, if they are commonly asked then your viewers want to know.

• Assess the questions customers have asked you recently and define the most common. Provide concise answers
• Offer an alternate option for telephone or email support in case people need more information

Privacy and Security

Specific pages dedicated to privacy and security should be clearly available on your site. This information assists in reassuring the viewer that your business is trust worthy.

• Assure customers that their information will not be passed on to a third party
• Explain that data transmitted through purchase pages is protected
• If you use SSL encryption (verified security certificate, with Visa do, explain how this protects their details

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