5 Basic Steps to Improve Your Website (Small Business E-commerce Link Digest – December 17, 2010)

Your website is key to your business success. And, lucky for us, there are lots of how-to’s and why-should’s out there about how to make your website better. I’ve even offered those myself, a time or two. But, sometimes the best things to do are the simplest. So, here are 5 basic things you can do to make your website better:

1. KISS Metrics put together the anatomy of a perfect landing page. I love this info-graphic. It works great in conjunction with my 6 questions to improve bounce rate.
2. Search Engine Land offers a list of the 25 most common SEO mistakes. Does your site avoid all of them?
3. One big SEO mistake is having a site that’s painfully slow, to say nothing of what it does to consumers. Google increasingly is taking the speed your site loads into consideration in its rankings, and your customers have probably done the same thing for a long time. Of course, first you have to know how fast, or slow, your site is. Fortuntaley, the Yottaa Web Performance Optimization Blog looks at how to use Google Analytics to measure your page load time.
4. We all love social, don’t we? Well Mashable offers a good look at how to optimize your social media marketing that’s very handy.
5. And, of course, none of this matters if your site blows up in the middle of the night. So I strongly recommend taking a look at my 7 critical steps to ensure your website stays alive.

Now, following these is no guarantee of fame, fortune and a fanatic following. But, NOT following these is sure-fire recipe for disaster. So, if your business slows down this time of year, why not give your site a check-up and see if you can set yourself up for greater success next year?

Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the local, mobile, social web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today.

Or subscribe via email.

And while you’re at it, don’t forget to follow Tim on Twitter.

Technorati Tags:
continuous improvement, conversion, conversion rate, conversion rate optimization, E-commerce, e-commerce, e-marketing, ecommerce, internet business, internet marketing, landing page design, landing page optimization, marketing, marketing best practices, Mashable, online marketing, page design, performance, search, search engine optimization, seo, social marketing, social media, tools