Moving Things Around
By William Hanke

How often, men, have you come home to find the living room furniture in different places? Your wife said she was ready for something different, so she moved some things around. It may have been inconvenient at first, but deep inside it felt good to have things a little different at home. Maybe by moving the couch over there it made the room seem bigger. By moving the TV over on that wall gave the room a sense of coziness.

The same can be true for your website. If you are in a rut, and your website isn't bringing in the results you thought it should, maybe a little 'furniture moving' is what you need.

Recently I moved a few things around on my home page. Instead of hitting the customers with an immediate web design and hosting blurb, I put something that caught the user's eye. My newsletter. Now the first thing that a potential client sees on our home page is an offer for FREE tips and specials. Immediately the customer is 'given' something, instead of the same old here's why we are the best. Since moving the newsletter link to the top, we've had a surge of subscribers, more than we've had in the last 6 months.

Moving things around may be good for more than just you. Google watches home pages for stagnant, unchanging information. If your page is not updated regularly, Google (and others) actually figures that into it's vast algorithm that it uses to rank your site among the others. Moving things around can keep your page fresh, and importantly, keep you in the listings.

Be careful, though, that you don't move too much stuff. If you have a login link, moving it may confuse those customers of yours that are used to clicking in the upper right corner to log in. Move that, or change it's color, and some users may simply think you've discontinued that service, or have completely abandoned them. Move with caution.

Have fun with your website. Keep it fun, keep it interesting, and keep it moving!

Will Hanke is owner of Lighthouse Technologies, http://www.techlh.com a web design, programming and hosting company. He is also author of several software applications in use by companies across the US.