7 Tips to Improve Your Website

Our most recent post about business websites covered 6 ways to get more web traffic. Hopefully if you’ve followed a few of those tips you’ve been able to see some results and get more visitors to your site. But that isn’t the be all and end all. Just like anything in business, a website should be flexible enough to evolve and grow to meet changing needs. You should always be looking for ways to improve and enhance your business website if you want to truly get the most out of it. Here are 7 tips that will help you make your current website even better.

1. Identify the problems – Look at your site objectively. Be honest - if you were a visitor, would you stay on that website? This will help you to identify possible problems so they can be addressed. For instance, maybe the color of the font is making it hard to read, or maybe there are too many graphics so it appears cluttered. Fix what’s wrong so you don’t turn visitors (a.k.a. potential new clients) away.
2. Simplify – You don’t need a million pictures or fancy graphics on your business website. These things could be drastically slowing down the time it takes for your pages to load (and annoying web visitors). Keep only the information you need and that you feel is relevant to get your message across and get rid of the rest.
3. Consider a makeover – If your website has been the same for years, it might be time for a facelift. Consult with a web design company to see what they can do to spruce up your existing page and make it look more modern and fresh.
4. Keep it up to date – Take a look through your “static” or informational pages, like your “About Us” page and make sure all of the content is up to date and reflects any changes that you may have made to your company. For instance, if you’ve been in business for 7 years but your “About Us” reflects only 3 years, that looks bad for your company.
5. Add new content – If you really want to encourage people to return to your website and recommend it to others, you’ll have to provide them with something new and relevant to look forward to. Consider adding a section for the latest news or stories about your industry or niche that will keep your readers interested, informed and coming back for more.
6. Update your blog – For your blog to serve its purpose, you absolutely must make it a priority. Add posts at least once a week and choose topics that are interesting so that they engage your audience. As a bonus, blogs that are regularly updated do very well in the search engines, so it may also help to get your business found on the web.
7. Make your contact info visible – Believe it or not, I’ve come across countless business websites where I had to search through pages and pages just to find their phone number. It’s incredibly frustrating. Make sure your contact information, including phone number and email address, are easy to find to encourage your visitors to reach out to you. Better yet, consider adding a “live chat” feature to give your visitors instant gratification.

These simple things should help you optimize your website and keep it fresh so that not only will you encourage visitors to come to your site, but you’ll have a much better chance of keeping them there.

Labels: small business tips, website optimization