One of the worst things you can do to kill your business’s website traffic is allow the site to stagnate. Knowing when it is time to refresh and redesign your website is crucial to keep customers returning—but improving and updating your site is just as important.
Know When to Hit the Reset Button
Redesigning your website is a great way to avoid letting your brand become uninteresting, outdated and forgettable. But knowing when to make such an overhaul is difficult. Luckily, there are ways to track how your site is performing online. One such method is sifting through user complaints. By considering what visitors to your website have to say, you may be able to find all that needs attention on your site.
Other data to consider is your site’s bounce rate, which shows you how many people leave your site after looking at only one page. This is a great indicator of how interested people are in what your site offers. The higher the bounce rate, the more likely a website redesign is needed. If your website isn’t mobile friendly, then the site needs an immediate redesign. More than 90 percent of people on this planet have a mobile phone, according to SuperMonitoring.com and most of them have Internet access. If your website isn’t mobile device-friendly, you’re already behind the times.
Analyze What You Do and Don’t Have
What you change is just as important as when you change. Analyze what it is you want your website to do for you and, more importantly, for visitors. Setting new goals and expectations will help you redefine your website and narrow your focus. If getting the word out about incoming seasonal clothes is your most important pitch, then be sure your site has fresh, clickable graphics to drive traffic to those pages. If you need help with the design, companies like Weebly can help.
Potential areas for improvement include the homepage, conversion paths and your content. Making sure your homepage works well for both PC and mobile device users is a must. Videos that show up blank, for example, are a big problem. Sometimes the first impression is the only chance you get to win a visitor over. With conversion paths, be sure visitors can contact you easily through your website. This opens up so many more leads for your business.
Now that you’ve had your website up for a while, it’s time to refresh the content. You should know your customers better by now, so rewriting content to better suit your returning customers can really make a difference. Your content should be extremely relevant to your particular audience. It is also important to have your SEO strategy planned out from the beginning to avoid any backtracking of coding and redesign.
Spruce it Up
It is important to effectively use keywords in your headlines and titles. Writing headlines is a bit like writing poetry. You want to keep it short and sweet, yet leave an impact on the reader. Often times, readers only get as far as the headline or title before they move on, so grabbing your reader’s attention with a good header is vital.
Adding video, if you don’t have it already, is good way to add action to your site. Whether it be a vlog post or a series of interviews and testimonials from customers, the video feed to your website must be clean, professionally edited and user-friendly. Be sure to include a link to your website in the video to assure it diverts viewers back to your website (in case you post the video on YouTube, for example).
Including a blog on your website can put your business on a whole new marketing platform. Attracting new customers today is about relating to them and their likes. Blogs can keep your website continuously refreshed and attract visitors by providing content they can relate to. Having a personal voice on a topic visitors can relate to tones down the hard sell and creates a better relationship that can establish your best customers. The dialogue between you and your customers comes off more natural and can generate many new leads for your business, as well.
