One of the most important factors of digital marketing for your business is your website. It is usually the first port of call for your audience or customer base, and is probably the most cost-effective marketing tool you have! Here are some of the top reasons as to why you might want to look at refreshing your website.
Effectiveness
Monitoring your website’s statistics is important as you can see what your visitors are clicking on, how they are getting to your website, which pages they visit and how much time they spend there. Making use of a call to action (CTA) is a good way to make your website more effective, a button or a link included on your website to find out more information or complete an action (such as a newsletter sign up). CTAs need to be clearly defined and interesting enough for your visitors to want to follow them in the first place.
Usability
Websites these days need to display properly over many different types of device; including monitors, tablets and phones. This needs taking into consideration, and checking, before a website or redesign of a website is made live. Another important usability feature to consider on your website is the navigation across it. Depending on the device with which you choose to view a site, your navigation is often required to adjust to the changing screen sizes; this is where the ‘hamburger menu’ comes into play, as it condenses your menu and replaces it with an icon consisting of three horizontal lines and tucks it neatly away until you need it.
Visual Appeal
Your website needs to look professional and inviting, it is usually the first port of call for your customers, and it is (or should be) a direct reflection of your business! First impressions count, so it is really important to redesign your website regularly to keep it fresh, up to date and relevant to you and your business.
Stability
To allow your website to function well, the software needs to be kept up-to-date. Technology updates rapidly, so older software will eventually become obsolete and unstable; which can, in turn, cause issues for your website if not reviewed regularly. An outdated plugin in the back end of a website can cause confusion for your customers by displaying errors or causing things to look a little disjointed on the front end. Performing a website refresh becomes a great opportunity to take note of any issues and fix them; you may also benefit from faster load times, an improved user interface and features.
Security
As well as keeping your website stable and functioning correctly, it is important to keep your software up to date for security reasons! Hacking is obviously a big concern for businesses as it compromises websites, risks blacklisting and affects traffic to your site. To protect your company, including your website and emails, ensure that your website’s software is updated regularly.
Legal Standards
There are a lot of guidelines that your company, and website, has to adhere to these days. There are privacy policies and terms of use agreements, disclaimers, GDPR and accessibility that all need to be taken into account. Including these, if you don’t already have them, is an important addition to your website. It’s important to keep these updated too, in content and appearance!
Content
Getting the attention of your customers through a well presented and designed website is a good first step, but you then have to keep their interest in the content that you present to them. This should provide information about your company and how you work, information on the services/products you offer, projects that you have worked on and your contact information. You only get a limited amount of time to engage visitors to your site, so make your copy count! A website refresh allows you to step back and evaluate whether your website content is still working for you as a business, and it is a great time to make some tweaks to better represent who you are and what your company stands for.
Accessibility
It is important that your website is accessible and ensuring that your website is usable by as many people as is absolutely possible. This can mean a wide range of things, including ensuring that the accessibility of your site benefits groups of people using mobile devices, or those with slow network connections. However, for this purpose, it is important that your website presents no barriers for individuals with physical or situational abilities also. Think about colour pairings, font styles and sizes and even if there are any plugins that you can use that alter aspects of your site for an individual at the click of a button. Implementing these changes when looking at your website refresh is good for your business as you are widening your potential customer base, but you’re also showing that you’re a business that is inclusive and cares.
SEO
This is all about people finding you and your business online! Algorithms are being constantly updated, the longer that you wait to update your website to reflect this, the further behind you become. This is why the perfect time to revamp your SEO is when you refresh your website!
Load Times
Fast load times are really important for visitors to your website; this is so that they do not get bored or frustrated and then leave without even seeing what you’re about. Google rewards sites that load faster with a better search results placement, meaning that you will be seen by more people when they are searching for the right keywords to find you and your business. This means that your business will be rewarded by Google if your website loads faster than those of your competitors. There are many factors that cause slow load times, these include image sizes, page caching and even your web hosting.
Is your website at the stage of needing a refresh?
We’re happy to have an informal chat with you about how we could help revive your best digital asset! Get in touch on 0333 242 0508 or fill out our contact form here!
