Spring has sprung, so it’s time for some spring cleaning. We’re not discussing sweeping the warehouse or tidying up the office supply closet (although we’re sure you need to). It’s time to update your site! Think it’s good enough as it is? Here are a few ideas that might make you reconsider:
Start With A Glance
Begin with a blink test: look at your website for 5-10 seconds without blinking, and then look away. What do you remember? What have you absorbed? Did you understand your business, the products you offer, and your brand message? If not, give that homepage a little rework with high-res images, bold headlines, and eye-catching calls to action.
Clean Up the Content
Pages: Run some analytics to see unique visitor traffic, bounce rates, and best-performing pages (and the worst-performing) – then make tweaks based on what’s working. Search your top keywords and make sure you’re ranking where you expect to be on both Google and Bing. You should also comb your site for broken or dead links and run a regular performance check to ensure quick load times.
Better blogging: Even if the purpose of most of your site’s text is, it is still an essential content source! Write blogs that position you as an industry expert, not just a product pusher. Create posts that will resonate with your customers. Look at what’s being discussed and shared within your communities and between your influencers. This will help you zero in on topics and issues that are current and of interest to your audience.
Pictures and reviews: Your product pages and descriptions must also be up-to-date. Better screen resolutions and increased screen size mean you must go with bigger, bolder product images. Make sure everything is high resolution – and if you don’t already, consider adding 360-degree views and image-enlarging/zooming capabilities too! If you don’t have product reviews on your site, start asking for them. Tempt customers to review by offering a discount code. If your reviews are older than one year, you need to get some fresh ones! Reviews are a great source of authentic content, are known conversion drivers, and help significantly with SEO.
Check out part two of this series.