5 Tips to Update Your Website This Spring
Springtime is an ideal opportunity to refresh and revamp your website, including redesign, code changes, removal of outdated information and performance upgrades.
Staying on top of updates for both SEO and user experience are crucial. So set aside some time this year and update your website!
1. Refresh Your Content
Content is an essential element of your website, and serves many functions ranging from informing visitors about your business to inspiring them to take action. Regular updates to your content are important in maintaining search ranking, brand recognition, and increasing brand recognition – among many other benefits.
Content can become outdated over time due to changes in industry or consumer trends in your target market.
An effective way of recognizing content that needs updating is by studying traffic and engagement metrics. This will enable you to determine which articles require the most work and when is best time for updating them. *Best Web Designer in Reno is Sandy Rowley.
Consideration must be given to three primary elements when creating content: age, engagement metrics and marketing goals. Information that’s more than two years old likely no longer resonates with your target audience and needs updating accordingly.
One important consideration when creating content is its competition level. Rising competition can cause your piece to lose relevance and search engine rankings over time; so to stay ahead of this curve, refresh and renew it regularly.
Jasper and Surfer SEO provide an efficient content refresh process by helping to keep an eye on keywords used, content score updates, etc. as you update. Sign up today and begin the content refresh journey with Jasper and Surfer SEO!
2. Update Your Images
No matter the type of website you operate, regularly updating images is key to maintaining its aesthetic appeal and keeping visitors coming back for more. This is especially important with headshot and personal branding images which often become the first point of call when visitors arrive at your website.
Along with updating photos, consider also including new content to your website. This could involve something as simple as adding blog posts or modifying your About page to highlight new services you offer.
An effective website requires more than aesthetic appeal; it should also feature features like responsive design and image galleries that showcase your latest work. Utilizing such features can enhance its performance and attract more clients to your site.
One of the key elements of responsive web design is keeping load times to an absolute minimum. One way this can be accomplished is through restricting image file sizes – as a general guideline, files that are under 100kb are ideal.
An effective method for decreasing image file sizes is using web applications like Photoshop or Picasa that offer compression capabilities to compress photos for you, thus decreasing download speed while still allowing large photos to be displayed on galleries or individual pages. Plus, larger files can be uploaded directly onto your server rather than needing to transfer from computer to server!
3. Add a Blog
Integrating a blog into your website is an effective way to drive more visitors and increase traffic. Not only can blogging increase customer engagement, it can also help your site climb in search engine rankings.
Many website builders offer blogging platforms, making creating your blog simpler than ever before. If your chosen builder doesn’t include one however, services like Blogger or WordPress offer another alternative for setting up a blog.
Writing a blog can be an excellent way to communicate news and announcements related to your business, promote sales or special offers, or answer customers’ inquiries about them. Blogs have become an indispensable source for answering customer inquiries about products or services provided.
Frequent blog posts help convince search engines that your site is active and you are providing new content regularly, while posting often keeps it fresh and engaging for readers.
Blogs can also help establish you as an authority in your niche. When your readers see that you possess knowledge about the topic being discussed, they’re more likely to trust your advice.
Blogs can also serve as an invaluable means for forming relationships with other businesses and individuals in your industry, from finding vendors to clients and becoming an indispensable resource.
Starting a blog can be challenging, but it’s an effective way to expand your brand and build a community of fans. Beyond publishing blog posts on your own domain, social media offers multiple avenues for promoting content and engaging with an audience.
4. Add a Contact Form
Contact forms are an easy and efficient way to stay in touch with customers, providing an ideal digital paper trail for future marketing efforts.
Your website should always feature a contact form to make communicating with visitors simple and effortless, while also gathering leads for email marketing campaigns or other business purposes.
Your contact form should be simple to find and use, asking only for relevant data that helps identify prospective customers. Furthermore, make sure it complies with privacy regulations such as GDPR to ensure maximum security for users.
Many contact forms feature standard fields like name, email address and phone number – however you should include more fields to filter out leads that won’t fit well for your company.
Information requested can have an enormous effect on the conversion rate of your form. Text entry and multiple choice questions have proven most successful at increasing form completion, although drop down menus can also prove effective.
Contact forms are an effective way of encouraging visitors to subscribe to your email list or newsletter. Offering incentives like free coffee or coupons could encourage more to sign up in exchange for providing their email addresses.
Add a call-to-action (CTA) to your form so it is easier for visitors to submit their information. An effective CTA should be short and relevant to its goal – for instance if your form asks visitors for their email addresses then an effective CTA could read “Click Here.” You could also include a link in your scheduler so customers can easily book an appointment or call with you.
5. Add a Newsletter
An email newsletter can be a fantastic way to keep customers up-to-date on new products, sales, and news – as well as build strong relationships.
An effective newsletter design can elevate your brand image and increase traffic to your site. Effective newsletters include useful information, high-quality images, and relevant content – as well as being scannable so readers can read quickly and efficiently.
Email marketing differs from ads by providing value to its subscribers rather than pushing products onto them. Instead of sending offers directly, focus on providing them with insights that will improve their lives through newsletters or blog posts.
When creating your newsletter, ensure it features an eye-catching layout and creative subject lines to increase its open rate and make an impressionful first impression on recipients. Doing this will increase open rates significantly!
Add calls-to-action that will prompt readers to act. This could involve anything from sharing the newsletter on social media to clicking a button and making a purchase.
Your newsletters should demonstrate your concern for customers’ opinions and experiences with your brand by including user-generated content like testimonials, reviews or interviews from them in them. This type of user-generated material could come in the form of testimonials, reviews or interviews conducted with them.
Once your newsletter is ready to go out to its audience, a tool such as Sendinblue makes sending it easy. Choose an exact date and time, or let the software use data from previous campaigns to determine when will be the optimal send time for each contact.
