Renovating your website? How to get the most out of it!
Ideally, websites should be renewed every 6 months for organizations in software, web technology or online marketing. Another measure is that if your website is one that people visit daily or frequently, such as news sites, then it must deliver new content that matches this visit frequency and a new look every 6 months.
For everyone else, although not mandatory, at least once a year is imperative if one wants to seriously reap the benefits of the Internet. Last year’s great site is no longer today. In today’s world of Web 2.0, this happens all the time due to rapidly changing technology.
Well there it is – you are now revamping your website and would like to make the most of every dollar you spend. This is what most companies want but don’t know how. Being experts in their line of business, most business executives cannot be expected to know much about websites and their related complexities.
So this is the typical problem that our new customers pose to me, wary after their previous renewal received poor customer feedback or had fewer visits, causing the site to generate less business.
Having encountered this many times, especially in these recessionary times when budget cuts, hiring freezes, declining sales etc are common, the need for an updated and better looking website with richer content now it has become more important than ever. So, I thought it was time to answer what my clients ask: “Ajay, why don’t you, as usual, write about this and make it available to those who wish to tackle this problem effectively?” And the result is this article freely available to everyone in our knowledge center.
Getting to the point head on, here it is:
Renewal? Later:
1. Do it at least once a year. A renewal does not mean that one has to completely review the website; make small incremental changes that lead to a better layout, color scheme, or updated content. This profoundly impacts the business in a positive way.
2. Good websites are those with a solid design, but great websites are those with informative content coupled with, undoubtedly, a solid design. (Now I heard, what is content? Well, that’s what I say “Content is king”, aside from euphemisms, content is all the information that a browser gets through text, images, videos / Movie clips, diagrams, links and downloads readily available on your website.
3. What is your strategy? Strategize in terms of how your website:
to. Contribute to your results by attracting new customers.
b.Interfaces with existing customers that result in better retention.
c. Reduce communication costs.
d) It communicates with the latest product launches, events, developments and improvements, not only for external clients but also for internal ones.
and. Attract leads from sales, RFQ, and order closing.
4. Focus on the user: conceptualize your website by putting yourself in the shoes of your current and potential customers. What would they need and like? Do not use it to express yourself or as an exercise in style. If visitors only like your website, then your cash register will ring! Think about the different profiles of the people who visit your website: age, education, location, function / department, information needs, single buyer or repeat orders, etc. Is your target audience looking for eye-catching and colorful presentations with audio? docked, relevant to fashion / event / entertainment websites, or is it the variety of adapted, booted and laced people whose attention span fades after the initial 2 minutes, who will visit your website? – Here, a clean and robust look with great content packed with knowledge and simple and straightforward navigation elements that download quickly is what would work. While it is important that your website looks clean and professional, it is much more important that you focus your efforts on content and promotion.
If you want a professional website, stay away from:
I. Date and time stamps, unless your website is updated daily or weekly.
ii. Busy funds.
iii. Freeware Visitor counters, which say “you are the umpteenth visitor”.
iv. Too many Flash movies, animations, or moving text.
v. More than 3-4 pop-ups or pop-ups below the boxes.
saw. Automatic music playback. Allow your customer to play music only if they want to.
5. Have a clear path that you would like your visitors to follow and build website navigation around it. Have clear, but actionable little points scattered along this path, where you would like to guide your visitors to take some action on the content you have posted.
6. Get opinions from all your department heads and integrate them into a cohesive and united presentation that positively projects your organization with content that will interest everyone who may visit your website. Make sure your content is driven by sales because ultimately that’s your goal – sell more!
7. Don’t try to make the website in-house or try to be ashamed of the costs while hiring an external organization to make your website. Make sure that the organization that creates your website does not only do what you say, but also advise, guide and ask questions to obtain the most effective factors that lead to overload your website to turn it into a business engine for your organization. Also, it is best to leave things like the latest web trends, keywords, presentations and search engine optimization, site analytics / statistics to this professional organization. Make sure all registrations and renewals are directly in the name of your organization; this is one thing, coupled with ongoing balanced support and regular performance reports that sets a good website technology organization apart from the rest. However, make sure you learn something from these to understand what is really going on – a little new learning never hurts.
8. Be aware of what your competition is doing. This doesn’t mean copying your competition or just making a list of all the good things about your competition’s websites and then insisting that your website design organization do it. List what caught your attention about your websites. Look at your features and offers, the presentation style, the keywords used, and most of all, the content provided to the visitors. Create and customize them to suit your organization’s strengths. I repeat, build No copying.
9. Finally, to re-emphasize point 2 above: get creative with your content. Put the best of your content on your website, as qualitative, fresh and creative content is what makes the difference between a good site and a great site. What does this mean? – As a website owner, your focus should be primarily on creating great sales-driven content that your competitors monitor and develop on their websites rather than the other way around. Leave the rest to the organization you hire to design or renovate your website.
10. Lastly, speed up your website development / renewal – publish it on the web as soon as possible to get maximum attention as time is money and a visitor would go to another website that attracts and provides what they are looking for .
Finally, what I ask of all readers of my article: your comments are important to us, good, bad, ugly, it does not matter, but keep them constructive!