Your Web site IS your company. It is a critical customer touch point.  Before you allocate your budget to techniques to drive traffic to your site, make sure it’s the site you want visitors to experience. What does your Web site say about what it’s like to do business with you? Your marketing materials say you’re experts and provide great customer service---does your Web site pay this off? For first-time visitors discovering your company through a Google search or an ad link, what will their first impression of your company be?

Ask yourself these questions:

Is the organization and structure of your site intuitive to people outside your company, or does it just align with your business organization?

Do you have the information people expect and need presented in a web-friendly format, or is your site just an online brochure with a bunch of PDFs?

Can visitors find what they need quickly? Do you have useful tools to help with product selection and help them get started? Do you respond promptly to inquiries?

Is there any reason to return to your site?

Questions like these are endless, but the final point is the same. Make sure you are doing the basic things on your Web site right, before you drive more people to it. The best SEO techniques won’t help if you still have weak content, confusing pages, poor usability, and present a generally dismal online customer experience. Allocate funds to making these improvements first and then turn your attention to driving people to a Web site which you are proud of.

You are lucky to get a prospect to your site once. And in this instance, first impressions really do matter.