As a business owner, you understand the importance of creating and maintaining a successful, high-performance team of employees. A company is only as good as the people who work for it, so it is only logical that you seek out the best employees with qualities that will make them, and in turn, you, successful. Good employees are your best asset - they help your business profit through their diligence, commitment, and expertise.
Most business owners realize the correlation between winning employees and a successful business, and spend a great deal of time, effort, and money to find and retain the best of the best to staff their company.
But, what about your website?
Many business owners don't recognize the similarities between high-performance employees and a high-performance website. If you compare the two, you'll see how similar they really are, and from there, you can take steps to help your business' website become your Employee of the Month.
Top 5 qualities of your best, high-performance employees:
- Strong and consistent work ethic.
- Excellent interpersonal skills.
- Solid business fundamentals.
- Ability to network effectively within the organization.
- Ambition and desire to grow professionally.
Top 5 qualities of a high-performance website:
- Consistently attracts traffic.
- High interactivity with site visitors.
- Reflects industry best practices and business knowledge.
- Link popularity and reciprocal link exchange.
- Ability to be updated with fresh content and tools.
1. Your best employees are those that perform consistently, and truly work for the company. If an employee does not work hard for you consistently, it's not likely that you would keep him or her on staff. The same principle should apply to your website. A great website works for your business, not against it. Your website, if optimized correctly for search engines and marketed effectively, will bring online visitors to you, and will help convert these visitors to customers. If it isn't working for you, why would you continue to employ it?
2. A great employee works well with your customers. So should your website work well with visitors to your site. Websites that are basic online brochures are simply NOT effective in this day of advancements in technology. An effective website should contain a wealth of resources for your customers, including downloadable resources such as white papers, answers to frequently asked questions, and opportunities to contact the company and offer feedback.
3. You expect your employees to understand what is required of them and to apply businesses fundamentals and best practices in their job. Your website should be no different. A website that is built to industry standards and utilizes industry best practices for design and functionality will be effective and appreciated by your customers. Implementing best practices such as Web accessibility guidelines is simply a smart thing to do as the online world becomes more and more focused on the end-customer's needs.
4. Networking has long been an important part of business. Employees who network effectively are a great asset to you, since they will increase your visibility within the local market place. Effective websites apply the same principle through reciprocal link programs. Linking to another website that your customers would find beneficial, and having them link to you in return, increases your visibility in search engines like Google and Yahoo!.
5. Your website, just like your employees, should change and evolve as its role in your business changes in order to ensure that their 'skills' do not become obsolete. Websites should be designed in a way that makes them easily updatable. If you do not update your website with current information and leading-edge technologies, your readers will become disenchanted with it and are less likely to return to it.
Only when your website starts working for you as diligently and effectively as your best employees, will you see how much it can benefit your business.
