How many of these 10 update tips does your website 'tick' already?
The end of the year is a great time to do a self audit on your website and see what updates and changes you can make ready to launch into the new year rocking your website! Even better - ask a friend or colleague for their feedback. Sometimes a set of ‘fresh eyes’ will notice elements or areas that could be improved that you have become accustomed to looking at.
0 UPDATES YOU 1. HAVE A SUBSCRIBE FUNCTION Even if you don't have immediate plans to produce client newsletters or promotions you may as well be building up your email contact database with willing subscribers so you have them when you need them. Email marketing, delivered direct into people's inboxes is still one of the top ways to get sales. Did you know that if you have a paid Wix website, you will mostl likely have the inbuilt ability to produce and send email newsletters from within your dashboard? You can collect subscribers via a sign-up form on your website which then saves them to your inbuilt database. Get in touch if you don't have this subscription feature set up on your website and would like to. If you are a school, preschool or club etc it's a great way to send out a message to everyone at once as well. 2. UPDATE YOUR CONTENT Have a read through your website and check that the informaiton is: up to date and correct
well written using a consistent voice/brand
complete - does it give the user enough information
organised in a logical way
If you put your content together quickly when you first got your website up and running you may wish to relook at the value it is adding and whether it needs a total refresh. If content writing isn't your thing (and it can be so difficult for your own website) then you may like to consider hiring a professional content writer. It can be a truly invaluable investment. Holler at me if you need any recommendations in this area. 3. INCLUDE SOME 'SOCIAL PROOF' It always adds valuable credibility to your business if you can show some proof that your products and services are tried and tested. This could be through adding testimonials to your site, badges of certification/accreditation, Facebook or other social media reviews. 4. EFFECTIVE 'CALL TO ACTION' Call to actions are buttons or prompts on your page that directly drive the user towards an action such as to 'buy now', 'contact now', 'book now' or 'find out more'. You want them to be a compelling conversion path that drives the user to take that next step and click it! 5. CONSIDER ADDING A SEARCH TOOL Searching for information, products or keywords is a fast way for users to find what they are looking for. It is not necessary on every website but can be useful, particularly if it is a high content website or has many pages. 6. DOES YOUR WEBSITE STILL HAVE THE DESIGN 'WOW' FACTOR? Online trends do change quickly and before you know it, what was a beautiful 'on trend' website 2 years ago may now need a helping hand to give it the quick refresh it needs. It doesn't need to a complete redesign. If you are tweaking the look and feel of your website regularly (every year or two) then all it most likely needs are some tweaks. This may be to block layouts, typography, heading style or simply the main homepage. A website refresh usually takes between 2 - 5 hours for small to medium size. 7. ENSURE THE NAVIGATION MENU IS WELL ORGANISED Before someone visits your website, they most likely already have an idea of what they are hoping to learn, or what questoins they want to be answered. Therefore it is really important that your sitemap/navigation is organised in a user-friendly and logical way. Ideally people should be able to get to where they need to go in the fewest clicks possible. Group logical pages together under suitable headings with 'drop downs' that either taken users to a new page, or to an anchor point within a page. 8. DO YOU HAVE A FAVICON? A favicon is the small icon/symbol you see alongside your website domain in the internet address bar/tab. Not only is this another way to showcase your brand, but it also helps wih SEO. It is usually just a small square ratio version of your logo or sublogo and can be inserted through your Wix dashboard settings. I can easily help you with this but if you'd like to have a go yourself, just follow these instructions. 9. SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS If you have social media pages or other marketing platforms be sure to link to them on your website to extend your reach. i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Twitter, Pinterest 10. CONTACT INFORMATION UP TO DATE Ensure your contact details are up to date and easy to find on the website. This probably sounds a bit obvious but it's amazing how often business may move premise, or change their email address and fail to convey this on their website. If you have a physical address, would it be helpful to display your location on an interactive google map? It is also a good idea to have your contact details in seperate place. As well as a dedicated contact section, users will often skip to your footer to look for contact details. Another great place (if you have room) is to display your phone number or a 'contact' or 'book now' button in your navigation header (or near this area).