The Importance of Effective Websites

I met with Buzz Park of True Presence and we discussed how so many people are wedded to websites that hurt rather than help their businesses.

The problem is that most business owners have not studied what makes an effective marketing-focused website.



When you don't know what make a website user friendly, social media friendly and search engine friendly, you can easily be mistaken about your own site. You may mistakenly be guided, for example, on what you personally think "looks good."

Now this wouldn't be such a problem except that ineffective websites can impact on your business success. If your website isn't easily found through search engines or if your website loads so slowly because, perhaps, you have a Flash home page, you've unintentionally shot yourself in the foot.

Of course, most business owners are very busy running their own businesses. It's not feasible for them to carve out time to learn what constitutes an effective business website. But, as the saying goes, it's what you don't know you don't know that can hurt you.

I encourage everyone to devote a few minutes each week to reading one or two blog posts about the elements of an effective business-focused website. As I wrote in my blog post " Google Plus Could Help Businesses Find Content to Share on Other Social Media Sites," we may all soon be able to take advantage of Google+ to find this type of content and deliver it to us.

And as a shoutout to how social media can help businesses, Linda Rose Levine of Rose in Bloom told our West LA chapter of Our Common Thread how she had gotten clients through social media. "Social media really works," she said.

If you haven't yet started to take advantage of the power of social media to get in front of your business' target audiences, I encourage you to add this to your "must do" list for successful businesses in 2011 and beyond.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company Miller Mosaic, LLC. The company works with clients to clarify their USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and then use that USP for creating relationships on social media sites.

Miller Mosaic has a set of three how-to social media videos – Twitter, Facebook Page and LinkedIn – to help businesses and other professional service providers effectively set up their accounts on these sites.