Websites - the basics

In this post we'll try to outline what makes a good, informative, well-structured and (hopefully) successful website.

What is your website for?

Your website is as important as your business cards, letters, appointments, emails, telephone calls and any other way in which you interact with potential clients. At times it will be the only thing anyone sees and can be the first step to procuring instructions.

It is not difficult or expensive to produce or maintain a straightforward site that contains all the information you need. Initially, there are some free options, and when you know what you are doing you can move on to bigger and better things. But let's not run before we can walk - it's always better to learn from the bottom up.

NB: what follows assumes that you have access to your website and can make changes to it, or that you have access to a person who can do it for you. But if not, you might find a couple of tips to help you write for the web.

Essential information you must include on your website

You need to consider what to include for the benefit of your visitors.

• Your name, or the name of your business (what do they call you?)
  
• What services you offer (what can you do for them?)
• Some indication of pricing structure (don't rely on people calling you to find out!)
• Background on the legislation (begin to position yourself as the expert)
• Contact information, including a postal address (you're local! Let's make a deal)

It is perfectly reasonable for a small business to include this all on one page, or a couple of pages. There's little point having several pages with only a paragraph on each - it is irritating for the visitor to have to navigate around to find out how much you charge for an EPC.

Don't be shy - sell yourself

Throughout the copy (the words that make up your site) you need to reinforce why the client should choose you over everyone else that offers your service in your area. You don't have to offer anything different to the competition - you just need to package up your proposition attractively. The web is made up of millions of pages, and the art of writing copy for the web includes a certain amount of 'reassurance' that the viewer has selected the right page for them. Compare these two real examples:

1. We do EPCs in Northants - contact us for a quote. Accredited with NHER.
   
2. We offer a friendly and professional energy assessment service throughout Northampton and the surrounding area. Fully trained and accredited with the leading industry bodies, we pride ourselves on the quality of our work. We can provide a completed Energy Performance Certificate for you or your client's property within 24 hours of visit.

They both say the same sort of thing. Being concise is undoubtedly a noble aim - but don't forget to include all the good things about your service.

If you don't say it, people won't assume it.

Structuring your page using HTML tags

HTML is the basic programming language that is the foundation of all websites. Don't be scared. It is entirely within your powers to learn everything you need to know about HTML on your lunchbreak. You might not even need to know that much; some website management systems do all the hard work for you.

Your website, like any Microsoft Word document, newspaper, book or advert needs to be structured properly. It should be obvious what is the title, what is the main information, what is the supplementary information and so on.

Start at the start

A vital component of all of these things is the title. For a website, this is what appears at the top of the browser window as well as the 'headline' in Google [insert pictures]. Each page has a separate title, so you'd better make it relevant! If you can access the HTML, you are looking for the title tag. Three examples of home page title tags:

1. Untitled document
2. EPCs for the HIP
3. Quality Energy Performance Certificates in York

Clearly the third title is the best, and is successfully venturing towards advert copy territory - a good thing. It helps both Google and your visitors if you include words in your title that people are likely to put into Google - known as keywords. We'll talk more about keywords below and in further posts, but for now it is enough to start thinking about what keywords are appropriate for you.

A quick summary to hook searchers

The piece of summary information that appears below a page's title in Google is called the description, and is a type of meta-data. That is, information that sits 'behind' your website that tells search engines more about what your page is about. So, another opportunity to use your inner salesperson! This time, you're looking for the description tags.

South Lancs Energy Assessors offer quality assured energy performance certificates on homes and commercial buildings in the Manchester and Salford area.

Get in as many of your keywords as you can. If you don't provide one, Google will make one up based on the first bit of text it finds in your site. This is your chance to put what you think is most important.

Moving on - heads up!

Make sure the rest of your page is structured well. Make sure your headings contain keywords and they use h1 and h2 tags. Choose between:

• Rentals
• Landlords - we can issue EPCs for your rental properties

Not too hard to see what's better, is it?

Things to take away

Even if you can't play around with the site's structure, you can influence how your site is read by humans. Make sure you sell yourself!

People will tell you to write for either Google or for human visitors. It is your task to do both at the same time.

In a future post, we'll look at more advanced tactics for larger websites to improve their Google ranking.