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August 2008

Five steps to improve your website

Step 3 - Review your competitors' websites

The internet is a great source of information about your competitors: what products and services they offer, pricing, target market, approach to business etc. Having previously identified key words that you would like your website to be found by, the next step to improving your website is to review the websites of those competitors you saw whilst looking at your search engine ranking (where you appear in the search engine results).

Obviously the most important websites are those that appear higher up the results than your own, but those appearing below you might provide valuable ideas and be a future threat. Shortlist five sites to analyse.

Visit each site in the context of a customer, noting down both good - and bad - points. Do this in the context of things such as how the site looks, where it ranked in the search results, how clear the home page is (does it instantly encapsulate who the company are and what they do?), how much information it provides, any nice features it has (e.g. support forums, free p&p) etc.

Unfortunately there are also a large number of invisible technical aspects that affect search engine position greatly; you will probably need to seek the services of a web developer to determine how your competitors' websites rate according to these technical issues. Make sure your developer has experience of Search Engine Optimisation; it is a specialised field and not many developers have the requisite in depth knowledge to give good advice - even though many claim to do so.

Five steps to improve your website

Step 2 - Review your search engine position

As the internet has evolved over the last five years, one of the most obvious changes has been just how much busier it has become in terms of the number of users - and the number of competing websites. It is vital, if potential customers are to find you online, to appear within the top five positions in the search engine results. If you're not there people will probably end up going to your competitors instead.

To see where you currently stand, try to think of the kind of terms that your customers might type into Google to look for the products or services that you offer. Build up a list of these from your own ideas, those of colleagues and maybe even from customers.

Now take these key words, type them into Google (choose .co.uk or .com as appropriate) and see where your website appears in the results. In Europe, Google now accounts for up to 80% of all internet searches, so it is a great indication of how visible you website is.

This should give you a good idea of where your website is performing well, and where it is performing badly. It will also let you see who your competitors are - and how they are performing.