A New Web Face | 5 Reasons Your Site Might Need a Makeover
You look at your website every day, and the damn thing never changes. You're sure prospects and customers are just as sick of looking at it as you are, but is that any reason to spend good money on a website makeover? Definitely not! But there are many good reasons to invest in a new website that make sense from a business perspective and will help you leverage the web more effectively. Here are five of those reasons:
1. DESIGN
Design is a very subjective element of your website. Some people like green and others like pink, and there’s no way you can please everyone. Just ask anyone who does creative projects for a living. However, there are certain aspects of your website design that clearly indicate you need a makeover.
Screen Resolution. Until about 2008, most websites were designed to accommodate an 800 pixel-wide browser resolution, which at the time was approximately 10 percent of the market. Today, it’s less than 1 percent, so your website should be optimized for 1,024 pixels, giving you an extra 200 pixels of display area.
Flash Introductions. If your site is using Flash for a landing page, or relies heavily on Flash for content display or navigation, you have a problem. Not only are Flash components often seen as distracting to users, visitors who come to your site on iPads or iPhones can't see them.
Mobile Compatibility. Have you visited your site from a mobile device lately? From an iPhone, Android phone or any one of the multiple tablets? If your site has not been set up correctly (HTML and CSS), you may have display issues on mobile devices. If this is a concern, consider implementing a more mobile-friendly template on your site so the display fits nicely in a phone or tablet browser.
2. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)
If you’re able to track where visitors to your site originate, you’ll see that some of them are the result of visitors typing keywords into one of the search engines like Google, then clicking on a link in the search results.
Not only can search engines be a rich source of traffic to your site, they can generate quality traffic. Setting up your website so that the appropriate keywords are in your content and the search engines can effectively crawl your site is critical SEO. If your site is important in generating leads or selling products, then SEO should be a priority.
3. CONVERSIONS
Every site should have a clearly defined goal for a visitor, although there can certainly be multiple conversion points or different goals for different kinds of visitors.
Examples might be:
• Signing up for an email newsletter
• Calling a toll-free number
• Registering to attend a webinar
• Buying a product
• Requesting information
Based on these goals, you can track visitors to the site and determine how many accomplish a goal, such as converting.
If you’re not tracking conversions on your site or don't have a specific conversion method in place, then you should rethink your strategy.
4. CONTENT MANAGEMENT
Can you make changes to your site without having to call your IT department or email The Web Guy? You should be able to make 80 to 90 percent of the changes without knowing HTML or web development. A content management system, or CMS, will allow you to make the following changes:
• Create/edit pages
• Add images or files
• Create forms/capture information
• Manage SEO properties
All of these should spur you to review how your web assets are helping move the business forward and supporting your marketing efforts. n
5. CHANGE IN BUSINESS
Many clients come to us because their business has changed and want at least one of the following:
• They want to automate a certain aspect of the business for more efficiency.
• They have added new products or services.
• They're entering a new market.
• Some element of their brand has been updated or changed.
All of these should spur you to review how your web assets are helping move the business forward and supporting your marketing efforts.
David Crouch is founder and resident of ten24 Web Solutions of Northborough, which specializes in web development and content marketing. Email him at david.crouch@ten24web.com.
WBJ Web Partners
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