There is no better or more cost-effective way to advertise your business than online. The trick, though, isn’t just having a website, it’s developing the website to ensure it’s driving business growth. It’s very important to keep a consistent eye on changes and trends in website development over time so your business maintains its visibility within search engines, your leads come through smoothly, and your business simply looks good. Updating your business’s website for optimal effectiveness on a consistent basis is extremely important.
See also Website Content Readability
Visual Appeal
When people visit your site, they will see it as a reflection of your organization. If your site looks professional and is loaded with useful information, visitors will see you as an authority and expert. Likewise, if the site looks poorly designed and structured and/or out-of-date, they may make the same assumptions about your company. The website should highlight your product and/or service and the layout should look harmonious and consistent. If your website has blogs or articles that are dated, it makes sense to keep up posting and not look like you’ve neglected your site.
In general, as websites mature and grow, it often becomes apparent that certain parts just aren’t working well anymore. Website development is a complex thing. What makes your existing website tick will constantly be tested by new online technology sweeping through. You can’t just “set it and forget it” if you want your website to always look perfect. You may need to consider updating your website to achieve optimal effectiveness.
Responsive & Mobile Friendly
If you don’t know this by now, the USA is a SMARTPHONE SOCIETY. We’re all spending on average 7 hours online on our smartphones every day. If you factor that the constant indexing updates that Google throws at us, ignoring the mobile market is a very risky business. The common practice to make a website mobile-friendly (responsive design).
Responsive Web Design is a collection of techniques that allow a website to flex and adapt to the size of the screen it’s being viewed on. Someone opening your site on a small smartphone could be shown on the same site as the person opening it on their laptop etc. For many businesses, it may even make sense to design your website “mobile-first”. If you haven’t updated your website in a while, chances are you may be driving mobile users and potential customers away.
Find information on our responsive on mobile website design.
Technique & Coding
Is your website browser compatible? Is your source code valid (HTML and CSS)? Does your website meet the basic web standards? Is the technique and/or (version) PHP programming language outdated? Do you have any idea about any of this? :) Every year web standards change radically and techniques to build websites become more advanced to comply with these latest standards. If your site was developed several years ago, it could have a lot of unnecessary HTML code, outdated SEO, non-optimized images and more. This all may be slowing down your website loads speeds – which may, in turn, impact your ranking in the Google search results. TEST YOUR SITE FOR YOURSELF – go to GTMetrix.com and put your businesses domain into it. Here’s how we graded:
We have no secrets here. GTMetrix is an actual Google tool that anyone “in the know” can use to see where their site’s weaknesses or strengths are. Performance, structure, layout, SEO, SO MANY THINGS make up your site and you want them to all be working at their optimum. Although you may be able to check your website’s grade yourself, what you do ABOUT issues may certainly concern you. That is why you should consider speaking with a website developer about your options. If website design isn’t what you do, it’s just not smart to rely on yourself to do it properly.
Content
Your website’s first impression really depends on the overall layout of it, but ultimately, the visitor is there because they are looking for useful information. A full site redesign could allow you to re-address how you communicate with all of your visitors and to write easy-to-understand copy that is specifically on target and more effective – remember, in the modern “go faster and faster” world you only have 2 to 4 seconds to engage new visitors.
The content of a website should be considered to be the most important thing, as it helps in determining how effective a website is. Fresh and unique website content is a very important factor in encouraging people to revisit your site more often.
If your website needs updating for optimal effectiveness OR if your business needs a new website developed, consider collaborating with Creative Juices Marketing Agency. We’ll use our creativity and ever-expanding experience to make sure your business is in the right position to compel your customer base, improve and build on your brand, and ultimately increase your revenue. Contact Denise Hood at 434 964 7511.
