The web is the #1 place customers look to check out your business.
But is your website working as well as it should? And if it’s not, how do you know if it’s worth spending time and money upgrading it?
To find out if it’s time to update your site, ask yourself the following questions.
1. Are You Proud to Send People to Your Site?
Do you feel proud sending people to your website or does it make you feel a bit embarrassed?
Does your site portray your business in a modern and professional light, or does it make you look old fashioned and out of touch?
Website styles have changed dramatically over the last 5 years. Old style, text heavy sites seriously date your business and will dramatically impact the number of leads it generates for you.
2. It your website mobile responsive (…NOT just mobile friendly)?
More than 50% of search queries now come from mobile devices.
Mobile is so important, that Google have announced that they are changing their search algorithms to use the mobile version of a site to rank pages rather than the desk top version.
What does that mean for you? To future proof your business, your needs to make your site ‘mobile responsive’. This means that the site responds (or changes) depending on what device it is viewed on. Being ‘mobile friendly’ is no longer enough.
3. Does your site collect leads for you?
Only 2% of website visitors are ready to buy from your business straight away. The other 98% need more time and connection with your business before they will buy.
Smart businesses are giving away valuable freebies (called lead magnets) in exchange for customers to leave their email address details.
They then create a short series of automated messages that tell their story and give interested customers the time to get to know, like and trust them.
Don’t waste 98% of your web traffic. Ensure your site offers a valuable opt in and collects leaders every day on auto pilot.
4. Can you update the content yourself?
Websites need to be living and breathing entities that grow and evolve as your business changes.
Gone are the old style, individually coded websites that only designers could edit.
These days you should have an easy to edit website on a free, open source platform like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal that you can make changes on yourself.
This will also allow you the freedom to have multiple developers work on your site, not just the initial company who created it for you.
5. Are website visitors sticking around and converting?
You should be constantly tracking the key performance indicators of your website, such as time on site, bounce rates, pages per visit and website conversions.
Review these figures for your business each month.
If they are consistently low, you have a strong indication that your website isn’t useful to your customers in its current form and it is time to reconsider your web strategy.
CONCLUSION
Deciding to update your website is a big first step, but the answer isn’t as simple as going to a web designer and asking for a new site.
Developing a new site without enough thought could end up being an expensive exercise that just moves the deck chairs around on the Titanic.
Before briefing your designer, make sure you can clearly articulate:
- Top 3 things you want your website to do (your objectives)
- Who your ideal customer is
- How your website fits into your overall marketing strategy
- Your customers “before and after states”
- Compelling web copy
- Easy to understand navigation plan, and
- Clear call to actions on every page
Unsure of what these are for your business? This is where marketers like myself can help.
We work with you to develop the strategy, create the brief, write the copy and work with web designers on your behalf to ensure the end result is a site you can be proud of, that converts high rates of traffic into customers and helps move your business forward.