8 Tips to consider when your redesigning your website
It doesn’t matter if you’ve had a presence online for 10 years, or are just starting to acknowledge the power of the internet, upgrading your website is a great way to drive more customers to your business.
Customers today are spending more and more time online, and with so much content and competition on the internet, you need to make sure you not only stand out, but your performing up to the standards of your customers.
Here are some things you should DO in order to build your customer base, along with some DON’Ts that will cause potential customers to leave your page and never come back.
Do: Fill your website with original and informative content. People visit your website because they are looking for information in one form or another.
It would be smart to put yourself in your customer's shoes and consider what questions they may have when visiting your site. How can you answer those questions, and how can you do it as simply as possible?
Don’t: Add too much. Your website doesn’t need paragraphs of text. Simplicity is magic when it comes to building a new website.
You want to achieve your goals in as few words as possible, and make it easy for customers to find more information if they need it. Forcing information onto your visitors that they didn’t ask for is a sure way to sending them away from your site and onto your competitors.
Do: Add value. Include a blog or vlog to offer free advice to your future customers. Consider the experience from start to finish, and consider building the trust and loyalty of your visitors to make them come back again and again.
If you want a customer once, meet their expectation. If you want a customer for life, create an experience for them that goes well beyond their expectations.
The buying process, especially online, rarely follows a straight line. Adding more value for your visitors and customers helps create solutions for them at every bend and turn.
Don’t: Use an overabundance of stock footage. Using real photos and videos taken for your business is a great way to build trust with visitors.
Filling your page with too much stock footage creates a sense of falsehood for potential customers visiting your page. Since you’re trying to build trust, and since you don’t want your visitors to question your authenticity, make the investment in shooting real, up to date, photos and videos for your website.
Do: Make it Clear and Concise on what your visitor's next step should be.
There should be a purpose for each page, and a crystal-clear path for your visitors to find out what they should do next. Make sure that each page has a goal, and a call to action to reach that goal. Direct them to content related to what they are reading, drive them to your contact page, inspire them to click through to your social media, or even to add items into a shopping cart.
If you can’t find a goal or call to action that makes sense for the page, scrap it. It’s likely more important to you than it is to your visitors.
Don’t: Create a page of information for information sake. What you think is important about your website is likely not what your customer thinks is important.
You have some Bio’s and an About us page. Great! People love learning about the humans behind a business and the expertise and experience that accompanies them. But make sure you’re taking it further and not just tell how you can help, show how you can help.
“Click here to connect with Mr. CFO’s LinkedIN”, or “send Ms. CEO an email”, “read Mr. CTO’s blog here”, or “here’s an infographic on how Mrs. Sales Star helped clients like you!” Take your ego out of the site, and focus on helping your visitors.
Do: Keep it clean and tidy.
Don’t be afraid of white space. For the same reason you don’t want too much information, you don’t want too much ‘stuff’ just filling up all your pages. Everything should have a purpose, and your site should be appealing to the eyes. With the human attention span only being about 8 seconds, you don’t want to confuse visitors.
Don’t: Forget the small details. Fonts matter. Having a favicon matters. Hierarchy matters.
If you’re going to go through the effort of creating great new content, shooting amazing photos and videos of your business, researching your visitors to help provide solutions, and setting goals for each page, you definitely don’t want to fall short due to laziness.
You’ve invited people to sit at your table. Make sure your steak sizzles.
Last but not least, DO seek out help from experienced professionals. It’s easy to create what you want AND build a site that can produce results if you align yourself with a team that’s done it successfully in the past. Being able to bring your ideas together with a well planned strategy is a necessity to driving ROI from your amazing new website.
Click here to email us, and start the conversation on discovering the potential your website has on improving your business
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Mike Ross is the Content Creator for 902 Advertising Group and is part of a dedicated team helping businesses improve their brand through Content Marketing.
