Once businesses launch their new website they often think that they can sit back and relax. Don’t be this type of business. In order to have a successful website you must monitor your website, check it is getting plenty of visitors and more importantly, visitors who stay, navigate around, and fingers crossed – convert, whether it is into a sale or contacting you.
Your website is such a fundamental selling tool for your business that you need to nurture it regularly, always keep reviewing and improving it. Many businesses launch their website and then after a few weeks, realize there are a few elements that aren’t performing as they would wish, and this is the nature of the demanding beast. Regular review and updates are required, so get used to it, you’ve made a long term commitment.
To keep ahead of the game, make your website look its best and work to improve its search engine rankings.
Here are some simple tips to help you do that.
- On reflection, if the font looks a bit small it probably is. Make it bigger!
- If you have experimented with pop-ups, just get rid of them. How many times do I need to tell you that clients just find them irritating?
- Silence is golden. People really don’t appreciate the corny background music, so lose it.
- Make sure you have a customer support section. Customers like to know their personal query can be quickly answered by a real person.
- Increase the internal links. It’s so easy to do and helps in the rankings. Just review your content once again and get linking, but get rid of any link exchange page.
- There’s no excuse for errors. Proofread the content. If it’s beyond you, then call in a professional.
- Link the website to your social media pages.
- Don’t use frames on your website. It is a SEO killer!
- Make it easy for a client to contact you with clear and easy-to-read contact information on every page. Please.
- Make it easy for the client to know who they are dealing with. Create an informative “About Us” page and be sure to include images. Reams of boring text are such a turn off.
- For all of your images, add ALT tags, great for the search engines.
- Create a search function so customers can search for particular keywords on your website. Jolly is useful and customers love it (so long as it works well!).
- Make sure all pages have their own SEO friendly Meta description.
- Ensure the website is consistent throughout with the same navigation menu on each page and same color for links.
- Code each and every page with your analytics code.
As your business website grows in maturity, you will make many of the changes above, plus some. That’s just how it should be. Website review and maintenance is a never ending task, but one of key importance.
