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VALUE YOUR WEBSITE AND MAKE IT WORK FOR YOUR BUSINESS
If there’s one place first impressions are absolutely critical, it’s your website—and we’re not just talking about design and content. On top of that, up to date content, SEO Strategy and speed optimization are the most important determinants to its success.
With today's fast moving technology, websites can quickly become outdated if neglected, rendering them useless. If you don't have the time or resources to allocate to maintaining your website then Signing-up to a web designers low cost monthly maintenance plan is one solution and will guarantee your business continues to capture the unique qualities you provide maintaining the desired high performing website that not only delivers but promotes your business at the forefront of search engine results.
Small business owners face a multitude of challenges in these uncertain times! running and promoting their businesses and with the backlash of Covid, relentless price increases may also be faced with limited or no funds to invest in an effective marketing strategy.
Your website is the first point of contact with prospective customers online, represents and promotes your business, therefore it's a valuable low cost effective asset, marketing tool and must be cared for and kept up to date.
If you do own a website that is under performing, fits this profile and want to see improvements then read on how to unlock your websites full potential, this article is for you.
A websites main purpose is to promote a business and generate leads into the conversion arena if it fails to meet this basic criteria then any investment made in a website cannot be justified!
Limited marketing budgets often manifest into poor performing websites leading to neglected sites that under perform and therefore serve no real benefit to a business.
The success of a website as a companies number one sales promotional flagship marketing tool on the Internet, will only succeed if owners relate to the importance, function of a website and understand the following criteria:
Knowing how to unlock your websites full potential requires time, planning and strategy. Before you begin, ask the following questions:
Is your website design outdated?
When did you last update your website?
Have Sales & Enquiries decreased!
When was the last time you checked your keyword targeting and overall SEO strategy?
How to update a website
Review your current content and design
The first step in your website update is to give your current site a thorough evaluation. At this point, you’re not creating any new content but simply investigating what works well and what doesn’t. This way, you’ll be able to make a clear list of all the details that need changing.
Visual content: Check the quality and relevance of your visual assets, such as images and videos. Identify anything that looks blurry, pixelated or generally outdated. You may come across images that are no longer relevant or aren’t aligned with your current brand identity.
In these instances, you won’t necessarily have to delete the images altogether. Rather, you could use online media editing tools to bring them to life. Also, take note of your website’s loading speed. Old video files may be overly heavy, negatively impacting your site’s user experience.
Written content: As well as looking at your site’s visuals, scan through the written website content too. Look for any broken links, as well as missing or incorrect information.
For example, you may have old blog posts that no longer serve a purpose, or mission statements that don’t quite speak your brand’s language. Perhaps you could give more details on a certain product or service you’re selling or reword the text on your call-to-action button to generate more clicks.
Check your website’s data
As well as thoroughly surveying your site from the front end (the part of your website that visitors see), it’s also worth looking into your own website analytics. This will help you understand your audience’s behaviour and how you can tailor your site to better fit their needs.
Integrating tracking tools and analytics into your Wix website will enable you to monitor your site’s traffic. You’ll be able to check important information, such as which pages are the most popular, how much time visitors spend on each page and what your bounce rates are (meaning, how many visitors left your site without interacting with it at all).
Once you understand your customers’ behaviour a little better, take it a step further by analysing why they may act the way they do. If many visitors are leaving a certain page of your site without engaging with it at all, consider what is different about that page. Does it have more text than others? Does it take longer to load? Insights such as these will help you make more informed decisions when updating your website.
Evaluate your competitors’ websites
Research the competition: Look closely at your top competitor’s websites. Pay attention to their design, website navigation, content and any marketing strategies that they employ. Keep an eye out for common industry practices, such as to create a blog or an online store. These insights will help your website redesign meet (or even overtake) the competition.
An effective start point is to initiate an online presence audit that will establish current ranking on search engines, like Google, against your primary competitors and their online visibility, if carried out correctly the results will provide useful insight data on which to base remedial actions to improve performance.
Knowledge is power and the audits valuable data enables owners to make informed decisions to action on web design and SEO improvements to boost performance and leads.
Running a business always comes with challenges not least related to marketing so don't expect to ever figure out the perfect marketing strategy, it's something that needs continual work and refinement.
Its not all doom and gloom or problematic though, there are areas within the owners grasp to overcome a poor performing website without incurring unnecessary costs, the following headings provide some key poor performance indicators for site owners to investigate.
Optimize your SEO
Last, but certainly not least, remember that you want your target audience to easily find you on search engines like Google. You may have already worked towards improving your SEO in the past, but it’s definitely worth reviewing it as you’re revamping your website. You’ll have new images for which you should write alt text, plus additional pages that will require optimized URLs.
A good place to start is by conducting keyword research. Keywords are two-to-five-word phrases that your potential customers would type into search engines when looking for a business like yours. To increase your chances of ranking higher, take a look at these professional free SEO tools that will help you find the right words and phrases to target through your website.
Key Poor performance indicators to unlock your websites full potential
Maintaining your website is one of the most overlooked and under-appreciated tasks that can actually have a significant impact on your lead generation, data security and corporate perception. There are many reasons a website becomes outdated, listed below are some indicators that identify the cause of poor performance and how to resolve the issues.
WEBSITE MARKETING INDICATOR
Poor Performance
You have an existing Wix website that has been neglected and in need of attention.
Your existing site isn't converting or meeting your performance expectations.
There are no integrated marketing tools active on-site to promote your product or services.
Search engine results are poor and your site ranking is low or non-existent.
WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT INDICATOR
Inadequate Budgeting
You want to improve your online presence, visibility and get found by search engines.
You want to connect with your customers, automate your workflow and drive more traffic to your site.
You want to attract more customers but realise this is not an easy task.
You want to increase your market share and set your company apart from your primary competitors.
WEBSITE FUNCTIONALITY INDICATOR
Lack of Strategy Commitment
Your existing site lacks functionality related to your product offering.
You're searching for a specific bespoke system unique to your business.
You've built an internal business tool that you'd like to bring to market and sell to consumers.
You would like to add unique functionality to demonstrate your product benefits.
WEBSITE CONTENT INDICATOR
Ignoring Your Website
A recent HubSpot survey, 42% of marketers admitted to only make improvements to their website once or less per year!
Think about the last time the company went through a website redesign or online audit! How did it feel after the site launch? If like most people, there’s a good chance the final product was liked, but the process of getting to that point was complex, time-consuming and expensive.
The main website service focus should be to evaluate, maintain, update and improve the site, these actions will contribute towards improved performance, greater online visibility and search engine results, note don't let your company website stagnate.
SOLUTIONS
Checking the Functional Status of your current website to unlock your websites full potential
Before getting started refer to your answers, what is a website for etc, and be crystal clear about what's expected and what, as an owner you want the website to achieve. To get started on the right track, here are some useful tips to consider when creating a professional hi-performing website:
Set practical, achievable, realistic goals that add value & stimulate demand
Select a reliable website builder for example (Wix.com)
Start by using a blueprint frame to suit the business activity
Create a home landing page
Associate the domain name with the business brand
Gather dynamic content to use on the site
Set page layout, types and headings
Add call to action buttons (CTA's)
Design the site with growth in mind, (GDD)
Create an SEO strategy plan then optimise the site for search engines
Develop a social media strategy
Register with Google my business and all local directories
Make sure the site is mobile friendly
The site should be user friendly with accessibility in mind (ADA)
Make absolutely sure all contact forms comply with the GDPR
There is a lot business owners can action without incurring unnecessary expense!
SOLUTIONS
1. Check your current social media channels strategy
A social media marketing strategy is more important now than ever before, so analyse your current plan and re-define a new one if necessary taking into account the shifts and trends that are taking place in the market, these are very uncertain times.
Social media marketing is the act of using social media platforms to promote a brand or product, build an audience, generate leads, and increase sales and website traffic.
A great place for inspiration is reading the Wix blog post on social media marketing small business, you'll get some great tips & tricks to get you started its both informative and intuitive.
SOLUTIONS
2. Check to see if your marketing efforts are integrated
When integrated marketing is done well, your marketing platforms and campaigns are perfectly synced, your data flows seamlessly to enrich other apps in your stack, and your customers and prospects have the most unified view of your brand and service offers. Integrate your marketing, with all your other marketing channels making sure they work in harmony to promote your products or services with an aligned brand message across all content and assets.
SOLUTIONS
3. Check your current online presence ranking on Google
As great as your website and content might be, people need to find you even before they can buy anything or contact you. The idea behind the Online Presence Audit is to establish how effective your current online presence is when people use certain search phrases. The Online Presence Audit process must be simple, intuitive and straightforward. The simplest way to go is to use simple search phrases relevant to your business you think your potential clients might use to contact or find you for info easily. Our approach is to put ourselves in your clients shoes, for example if a business is location based like "Antonio's Pizza House" High Street what are the top ten results that turn up, or if it's not a location based business we just enter the name of the business like "Olive Tree Gifts", again what top ten results does google present.
Achieving a high performing website can take time and may not produce results overnight so be patient and keep going until the desired results are achieved, refer to the Wix blog on SEO for useful tips, if all else fails hire a web developer.
If you enjoyed this read and found it helpful! I've done my job so please share on social media or get in touch for a chat.....
Acknowledgements:
HubSpot Marketing
Wix.com
Updated 12/20/2022
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