Many businesses spend lots of money on their websites without questioning and considering what they’re doing or why. This often results in a website that looks great but doesn’t meet business objectives or help achieve business goals. A website can look good, but is it working hard for you? Is it generating leads, selling the right products, or raising your brand awareness?
The good news is that you don’t have to rebuild your whole website to make these improvements. There are some quick wins you can implement to make your website work harder for you.
Read on for our top tips for quickly improving your website!
Data, data, data.
To make continual improvements to your website, you need to know the following information (Google Analytics is a good place to start):
- How many leads does the site generate per month/week?
- Where do you acquire visitors?
- Which pages are they interacting with the most?
- Are there areas of your site that have low traffic or none at all?
- To be able to make continual improvements to your website, you need to know these numbers and how they play a part in the success (or not) of your website.
Search visibility
Make the most of your onsite content by using tools like Google Ads, Bing AdCenter, and Google Search Console to find relevant keywords.
Optimise your landing pages with relevant target keywords. This will ensure the page will appear in the search engine results (SERPs) you want when users are searching for your products or services. When optimising your content for search, ask yourself these questions:
- Are people able to find your website when they search for you on Google?
- How do people currently find your website?
- Are they searching by brand because they already know you? Or are they searching for what your business does and are finding you that way?
- Does your website provide content that’s relevant to the audience or search term?
Relevant CTAs
Having clear Call To Actions on your website is important for directing your visitors and telling them what to do next on their journey. Your CTAs should be actionable links, such as ‘Request a call back’ or ‘Book Here’, so visitors know exactly what to expect, and what they’re doing.
This is one of the most important points to consider, as the number of users who click on these CTAs will tell you whether your website is working hard for you and is helping you to achieve your business’ objectives and goals.
Security
Google alerts users when they visit a website that isn’t secure (in other words, without an active SSL certificate). A website with an ‘https,’ in the URL is the encrypted standard for websites. If your website isn’t secure, then Google will put users off from visiting it or consider it as a low valuable website with not much authority.
Long-term SEO
You should aim to improve your website so it’s not only found organically on search engines today, but in the future too. You can do this by creating an SEO strategy to help improve the value of your content and build authority over time.
Your SEO strategy should influence your content to focus on longtail keywords/phrases/ questions that your users are searching for, and provide content that offers a solution to their queries.
Use social media
“How does social media help your website?”, you might ask. Well, it’s more important than you think. Having a social media presence not only helps to build brand awareness and target a wider audience, but it also helps to direct referral traffic to relevant landing pages on your website. You’ll be surprised at how many people use social media to search for information and ask questions about products/services and engage with customer service. If you’re setting up social media profiles for your business, remember to include links to your website in your bio and posts, along with sharing content and offers that are valuable to your followers.
Content
Does your website have a blog or a news section? Having informative and relevant content on your site can go a long way in helping your site to do more for you. It can educate users about what you do, be used to promote services or products, improve SEO, help build your authority as a thought leader in your industry, and build trust in your users. Updating your content and posting regularly is key to making it work. But don’t post for the sake of it. Remember that each piece of content you publish to your website needs to serve a purpose; it has to help connect users with your brand and encourage them to convert. If you don’t have a blog or news section, other types of content on your website, such as case studies and testimonials, will also help to raise positive brand awareness and build trust in your users.
Putting your visitors first
A website’s sole purpose shouldn’t be to talk about your business; it should also tell visitors what you can do for them and why they should care about you, thus creating an experience. Clear messaging and signposting, and relevant pages are all key to demonstrating that it’s about the customer experience and not just your business. It’s also important to consider your tone of voice and messaging as this will help determine how you want to be perceived. Thinking about how you like to be treated as a customer and how you want to be perceived by your customers will help you to define your tone of voice and brand perception.
So there you have it, our quick wins and key considerations for improving your website. If you’d like to speak to one of our expert team members on further ways to make your website work harder for you, why not get in touch below? We’re looking forward to hearing from you!