People are looking for answers to their problems and you may very well have the best solution in the world, but if people can’t find you or they do find your website but can’t easily navigate it, then you might as well not even have a site.
Optimizing your website helps people find your business faster and makes it easier for the bots to index and rank you so that you will appear higher up in search results.
Whether you’re on a shoestring budget, a solid website can become a powerful marketing engine and opens the door to a great deal of opportunity.
If you’re not seeing the traffic or conversions that you ought to, it may be time to comb through your site and make improvements.
A website strategy is essentially a long-term business plan that’s built around your website. Your website strategy goes beyond the design you choose for your website—it helps inform the content you create, your marketing efforts, and more.
Here is how to create a website strategy:
Take a look at any existing data you may have about your customers that allows you to segment your target audience. Your customer data may include:
Be clear about what you want to achieve from your website. Website goals include:
The purpose of a competitor analysis is to research other businesses offering the same or similar products or services to your target audience. It's an opportunity to learn more about their strengths, weaknesses, products and marketing strategies which, in turn, can help you make informed decisions about your own business.
Before you start planning or writing any content, use keyword research tools to figure out what relevant keywords your clients are searching. By using certain keywords in high-quality content, you can increase your search engine rankings when people search for that keyword. These keywords may change from time to time, so it’s smart to check out keyword rankings on a somewhat regular basis.
Your story can help inform your customers about your business mission and values. Most clients love to work with businesses whose values align with theirs.
You need to monitor things like monthly website visitors, monthly unique visitors, bounce rate, where visitors are coming from, and more. Understanding how your website is performing empowers you to make adjustments to your website based on analytics and what you learn from operating your website.
Life may not be simple, but your website should be. One of the most important findings is that people scan websites. They come to your website for something specific and they want to find it fast! If they can’t find it quickly they will again move on to your competition. Make it easy for them to find what they came for
Social Proof on a website is based around the psychology of following the crowd – the idea that if other people are doing it, it must be good! Show visitors that you’re not just some random company out there, you are a valuable provider of products or services used by many others. Some good social proofing techniques include:
Even the best website is useless if it can’t be found. That’s why SEO – Search Engine Optimization – is so critical to having an effective website. Truly effective SEO can seem daunting to most small business owners because it requires a detailed strategy, constant analysis, and time. However, a good way to start is by adding some basic SEO elements that every website should have:
A customer experience is more important than the price.
Regularly track your website’s data in order to pinpoint which parts to improve on. You need to monitor things like monthly website visitors, monthly unique visitors, bounce rate, where visitors are coming from, and more. Understanding how your website is performing empowers you to make adjustments to your website based on analytics and what you learn from operating your website.
Your website’s security and loading speed is essential for two reasons: user experience and SEO. One in four users abandon websites that take longer than four seconds to load. Beyond that, the bounce rate (the number of site visitors getting on a page of your website and leaving without taking any other action) increases exponentially
If you have a website that is several years old, it’s time for an update. Fresh, current content sends a message that you are investing the time and resources to stay ahead of the competition.
Replace outdated photos with new images, add a video or two (welcome, product demo, tutorial) , update leadership profiles, post relevant industry news, and invest in some blog posts that prove you are the industry’s go-to expert. Basically, show your visitors that you are an innovative and “in-the-know” company about everything that matters to your customers.
Uptime is often all we think about when it comes to making sure our websites work. However, you may not notice issues like JavaScript not firing, buttons not working, a browser-specific bug, or mobile experience issues without the right protocols in place. By just watching sales data and monitoring uptime, you may miss that a segment of your audience is hitting a roadblock. Many users won’t seek you out and contact you when they can’t buy or can’t get to the content they want – they just leave.
Have a budget for continuously improving your web presence.
