Is your website earning its keep?
You’ve got a lovely new website. Spent precious time, budget and resources getting the imagery, styling, layout, content, messaging, key words just right and now you wait, in the hope the business will come.
Will anyone find it? How long will they browse? (it’s seconds, not minutes!!) Which pages do they visit? What triggers them to leave? Which blog posts get more interest? Whilst Google Analytics will you tell you this, what do you do with the intel?
Use it to get better at what and how you populate your website in future.
MOVABLE FEAST
You’ve invested in this online shop window with a content management system behind it so you can drive potential customers to your site, as well as update and add elements every time you want to connect with them. So make sure you do! Show visitors you’re open for business, you’ve got stuff going on. Update your blog, add news stories, pass on advice, share customer testimonials, latest projects and events. There’s always news to tell.
THE BROWSE, SWEEP
Don’t give visitors any excuse to leave but every excuse to stay. Readers don’t have to pretend to be interested when they’re browsing in the privacy of their own home, with multiple distractions it’s easy to leave when no-one’s watching. For that reason alone, it’s harder to retain someone’s focus and interest.
As you read this now there are 4.2 billion internet users in the world, browsing 1.6 billion websites and 3.3 billion people actively searching Google. That’s mad!
QUANTIFY YOUR KEYWORD SEARCH
When you built your website I hope you got good advice and made sure you optimised it according to what your audiences actually search for, not what you think they search for! By having a keywords install, we can see how many times a particular keyword search has been made eg: “marquees for hire” registers 2.7 million searches whilst “marquee hire” registers 12.7 million! That’s a big difference!
Don’t miss a trick - it’s worth knowing the most popular keyword terms for your field and building them into your website.
UPDATE & REFRESH
Use your website as you would a shop window, with different displays to ring the changes. Use your projects, case studies and news pages as an excuse to tell and share. Think of events as the trigger to connect with your audience. And if you don’t have time to write updates, either employ a copywriter to do it for you or remove the feed. It’s better to have nothing than a news page that hasn’t been touched for 12 months … looks like you’ve got nothing going on!
Factor in a little time every month and pick out a couple of things that have happened, ie: completed project, industry news, staff changes, funny insight.
Create reasons to inform and connect with your audience, not just going for the jugular with a hard sell when you feel like it. Your audience should feel comfortable, not pressurised. That way they’re more inclined to come back and purchase (or recommend) when the time’s right.
CONCERNED ABOUT SEO?
I’m employed by clients in various industries to write and post every month, so their websites stay updated and dynamic, keeping the competition at bay in the ranking stakes.
PROBLEMS PLEASE, NOT SOLUTIONS
Whilst you’re the expert in your particular field, there are web experts too. Please, please, please ask ours (https://freestyle.digital) what they recommend if you have a problem with your website, with their extensive knowledge they can often come up with a solution you might not even have considered. Don’t try and second guess what the solution might be.
TAKE A LOAD OFF
If you’ve got news to tell but you’re struggling to find time to write it, get in touch, I’ll happily take it off your ‘to do’ list.