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The Problem
Recent research by Hubspot concluded that a website is likely to suffer from neglect in just a few months after launch date. So what is website neglect and how can companies stop ignoring their No 1 online sales asset! what can you do about it and how will the improvements elevate your organisations online presence?
Stop Neglecting Your Old Content
As a marketer, you probably work hard to keep your website and its content engine going by publishing new blog posts, launching new e books, and produce new webinars on a regular basis. You rinse and repeat, pumping valuable time and resources into new content creation to keep your website, blog fed and your offers fresh.
Have you ever thought that the new content will soon become old content and all your doing is repeating the cycle. Why not take a hard look at the old content, as with your website and just refresh, add and optimise.
Assessing Your Current Position
This brings up the matter of why the importance of conducting an online audit of your current website and content to establish its underlying performance requires attention and should be carried out on a planned regular basis.
An audit of your old but continuously high-trafficked content will identify targets for revamps. Depending on the format and subject of the content and how old it is, some of it may take more of an effort to update than others. would need.
Rapid advances in technology have a drip feed effect and does undermine any efforts you make to upgrade or optimise so its important to keep abreast of new releases by employing them to your best advantage.
As a simple low cost example, if you're updating an offer like an eBook for instance, use the same landing page/URL -- just update it to reflect any changes to the eBook then reuse or updating a blog post, use the same post URL, but change some content and the publish date to the current day.
The same is true for your website, does the designs look tired or match your current business purpose, can you improve the call to action button copy, is there a better headline message you can adopt, do you have offers that are more relevant to the customer, are there other improvements you can make?.
When was the last time you took a long hard look at your online performance and SEO ranking?
The Solution To Website Neglect
If you can relate positively to any of the above suggestions its O.K. if your'e unsure it might be time to apply some conversion optimisation. Just think, with a simple CTA update, you can significantly improve the conversion rate of posts that are already generating a ton of traffic month over month.
To track how well your conversion optimisation efforts are paying off, record data such as your CTA's click through rate and your post's conversion rate before and after you make updates.
Unfortunately, it's all too easy to neglect your website and its content over time, its not like you've done it deliberately it happens to a lot of companies.
Regrettably, the more content you create, the bigger the content neglect problem could become, however on a brighter note you'll get even more bang for your money from your optimisation efforts applied to your old content.
Recent Example Website Optimisation
What Actions Were Administered?
The initial stage involved an assessment of the sites performance by conducting an online presence audit that provided meaningful data on which to take action. It was clear the site was under performing although site hits were at an acceptable level, however conversion rates were very low, (it later transpired the owner was not responding to enquiries!)
Since the sight was launched some 2 years ago Wix had introduced a number of advanced features that largely went unnoticed by the owner, therefore there was an opportunity to improve the function, performance of the site, introduce additional applications and punchy, positive content.
The home page was turned into a landing page with more emphasis on guiding visitors towards product purchasing while enjoying improved page content and usability. CTA's were geared to guiding the visitor to browse the companies collections with a view to purchase. Colours were focused on providing a back drop rather than images that distracted the visitor. A Wix pro gallery was added to highlight featured collections and the whole page de-cluttered to a simplified layout, this action improved page load time dramatically.
Olive Tree Boutique Collections Page
The lead landing page CTA encouraged visitors to shop collections for further products and details where purchasing takes place.
Header content was simplified for improved aesthetics and coded to show, hide as the user navigates down the page.
A dedicated collections page was added to highlight all the collections available with links to individual collections product content.
Social Media Channels
Social media channels were boosted with links to Instagram and facebook by adding the Ads powered by Wix AI, reaching out to more customers, driving traffic to the site, this innovative application opens up further sales avenue sources for development to boost additional online sales for the Olive Tree Boutique products. This positive action extended the current trading season from 6 months up to a full annual trading position, historically the owner only traded during the short holiday season.
Sustainability Statement
In Greece, the premiere source of high quality olive wood is farm-grown, the EU law allows harvesting only when a tree’s production of fruit and oil begins to wane.
There is an EU directive available about the preservation and sustainability of the olive tree entitled " Life Amongst The Olives " the owners were made aware of this directive and advised that a sustainability statement be added to the website as confirmation that any purchases of their olive wood products are made with material from sustainable sources. Customers are assured that any purchases they make do not contribute to bad environmental practices.
A full copy of the EU directive can be downloaded off the Olive Tree Boutiques website.
SEO Optimisation
Finally let's not forget the all important search engine optimisation SEO, without it your website could be in terminal decline or at worst go unnoticed.
Publishing new blog posts or optimising old posts on a regular basis is a great way to help your site rank highly on Google and other search engines. By default, the SEO title is taken from your post title and the page description is taken from the first lines of your post, tip, retain the posts original URL.
There's a lot to consider to achieve effective SEO so start by developing the right search phases that accurately describe your business, offers or location.
Internet search using the existing keywords were tested to produce a list of the top ten results against the companies website.
The existing short keywords generated multiple results and a low ranking, therefore action was required to redress the situation.
To improve the ranking more targeted long-tail keywords were used to replace the existing short word phrases a searcher would type into a search box to find the business.
The more targeted your keyword, the better as they have the ability to attract the right audience and increase the chances of searchers finding your website from search results.
SEO does not happen overnight its a long process and can take time for improved ranking to materialise, so keep going and be patient.,
for more information about conversion optimisation contact; michaeljfoxwebdesign@gmail.com
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