The spring season is well underway, and what better time to give your website a spring clean to introduce some freshness and encourage new growth for your business.
Why?
As one of your main marketing platforms, your website needs to represent your business in its best light. It is the online store window, billboard and front reception all rolled into one. It is important to freshen things up to reflect your business today – not what it was when you built it.
Whether it’s updating your written content or pictures, a change in your targeted key search terms or a fresh new look for the design, there are all kinds of things you can do that can make your website sparkle like new – and perform better too.
Rearrange your products or services
Just like you would change a window display in a shop, your business can do well by reorganising which of your products or services take precedence on your website. This is a great way to let your customers know of any new lines or new release of old lines have come in since they last visited.
It is also good for theming your sales focus with the time of year – you can focus on seasons or popular calendar events – or tie your focus in with international sporting events, charity drives, anniversaries (your business’ or something historically significant).
Find out when there is a national or international day/week or month highlighting something related to your business, or that you can use; EG NZ book month, international children’s day, or deaf awareness week.
SEO – target new search terms
Use this as an opportunity to identify and target a new set of key search terms for your business, ones which align with a particular market sector or product group you wish to generate more customers from. Update your web page content and Search Engine Results Page (SERP) information accordingly.
Update your content
The focus of your business has likely changed since you set up your website, and may be different from when you last updated the content. A change in wording can be as much about realigning the content with a new set of key search terms to target as giving your visitors something fresh to read. The information could be stale or even out of date. Returning visitors also don’t want to see the same information time and time again. They may only be there to check a detail but if you can catch their attention with something new, they may stay longer and navigate further into the site to find out more. Try just changing the photos to keep things looking fresher.
Share your news
This could be a good time to kick-start that blog or news feed you have been talking about. If your last blog or news article is dated more than 6 months ago, then your business is going to look stale in the eyes of any new visitors to your site. Even your old customers might think you are stagnating if you don’t share what’s been happening at least once a quarter. Best way to gauge how often to post an blog – think about how often your ideal customer will return to your business to make a purchase or browse what’s new. If you are a service based industry, work it out on how often you would invoice a regular client: once a month is a good rule of thumb.
CRO – improve your conversion rate for your website
Sometimes it is the little changes that make the difference. There are a lot of different areas on your page that you can tweak so it is a good idea to come up with a list and prioritise the ones most likely to produce results. You can use your Google Analytics to identify weak points in the buyer’s journey. These may include:
- pages with high bounce rates: if it is your homepage then start there
- drop-off points: where does the chain break and the customer leave
- underperforming calls to action: if you have Event Tracking set up right you will know which buttons, links and other elements are getting the attention and which are being ignored
- abandoned cart or incomplete forms: is the process to complicated or too invasive
- time spent on pages: focus your calls to action where visitors are engaged longer
A/B split testing
Running an A/B test on your homepage or other key page on your site is a great way to find out what to change to get a better result. This allows you to run two versions of the page simultaneously, with Google randomly allocating 50% of visitors to each page. Once you reach the allotted number of visitors to provide a reasonable test study, you can review the results.
Give your customers a reason to revisit your site
With your spring make-over to your website completed, you now have the perfect excuse to get in touch with your customers and invite them to check out and comment on your new look. Tie it in with a deal and see what kind of feedback – and web traffic – you can generate based simply on giving your site a bit of a tidy up.
To find out more about how to freshen up your website’s performance, or which of the above suggestions are right for you, contact Craig at Web Tonic to arrange a free consultation.