You have invested time and money to create a website. If you have yet to see any significant return on that investment, you may have a failing website that is under-performing. I’ve seen this over and over again but the solutions to this problem in most cases is not an easy one, so I’ve outlined some steps to help you boost your website and isolate why your website may not be working as hard for you, as it could.
1.) Design – How well your website is designed for your audience will not only help your site be found online but by creating a structured and functional layout to your content will keep your visitors engaged. A good mix of images and easy to read fonts and colors can be game changer.
2.) Mobile Friendly – Google’s new algorithm will be heavily weighted in how mobile friendly your website is, so your website needs to be responsive to all devices if you expect to be found online.
3.) Goals Are Good – Have a clear path to your goal. If you get a new visitor make sure you are strategic in how you layout whatever action you want them to initiate in your buying, scheduling or contact cycle. Make it simple and clear what they need to do next. Remember less is more!
4.) Performance – Does your website load quickly? Treating your website like a high performance sports car will help measure how search engines rank you. If your website is properly tuned this will help your SEO. Look to utilizing CDN’s (Content Delivery Networks) to host your images, using server and browser caching, optimizing code and minifying javascript and css where you can. This will help get your site loading faster and is a good start to providing an exceptional user experience for your visitors.
5.) Content is King – Get your content on point or die trying. Content is the heart and mind of your website. Without good fresh content, your audience has nothing to latch onto, nor does a search engine in determining how to present you in a search result. Having a content strategy is key. Find someone in your company or a good freelance writer to help you develop great content. Where possible, video can be the best vehicle to establishing your voice. Video is a great tool to engage your audience while communicating a lot of information in a short amount of time.
6.) The Social Dance – If you don’t think social media can help with your website you’ve been fooled. Having a pulse on social media can be a difficult, but when done right, and done often, it will increase your web traffic. Think of social media as the communication channels that broadcast your content source (aka your website). After posting original content on your website, link that content to your social media posts. This will direct traffic to your site. Remember it’s important that you own your content, and not the social media companies. They can change how people can see your posts with no benefit to your website. You’ll get the most out of a social media strategy, if you have already created a clear and strategic layout to initiate action, as mentioned in step three.
If your website is built and designed to create a great user experience you will have a website that gets found.