4 Improvements You Should Make to Your Website

0
184

If you’re trying to make your company’s website more competitive in the highly congested world of Internet traffic, you’re up against some stiff competition. Fortunately, there are many ways that anyone can use to make their website more appealing and successful. We’ve compiled a few basics to give you an idea of how simple improving your website can be.


1) Create an Attractive, User-Friendly Site
There are two things that matter most to potential customers interacting with your website: appearance and functionality. Does your site look nice and professional, and is it easy to use? If either one of these aspects is getting in the way of the other, you’ve got a problem. Even worse, if you have an unattractive website that’s also hard to use, you have a major issue.

 

First, you need to sit down and think about how you want your website to function. What is it that you’re trying to accomplish in the first place? Do you want potential customers to place an order? To join your email list? To sign up for service? Your website should have one main goal, and it should be organized in such a way that it makes this purpose apparent and easy. Otherwise, people will get frustrated trying to figure out which links to use to get what they need. More often than not, this will just turn any potential customers off.

 

As you start to consider redoing your website’s design and layout, make sure you are doing so with a careful eye for how it will reflect your functionality. Design should underscore functionality, not obscure it. If you don’t feel like you can design a good looking website that reflects your purpose in a unique and eye-catching way, it is certainly worth your time and money to hire a professional developer and designer. Just make sure you ask about their track record for flipping a site. It would be a shame to pay someone to revamp your website only to find that there are all sorts of errors.

 

An increasingly important factor to consider when revitalizing your website is making said website mobile-friendly. By making your website mobile-friendly, you are not only improving your mobile search rankings, but you are ensuring a better user experience. Mobile-friendly websites load faster, and let’s be honest—when you visit a website and it doesn’t load quickly, you give up on it.

 

 

2) Secure Your Website

Web security is extremely important for companies of all sizes, but especially for small and medium-sized businesses. It’s crucial to pay extra attention to this step as hackers will often target these websites because they tend to be less robust and have fewer security protocols.

 

If you opt to go with a hosted website, there will likely be some sort of security in place. However, you still need to keep an eye on user behaviors to make sure no one is trying to gain illegal access. Malware attacks and other types of hacking can still easily occur. To ensure that your website is effectively safe, look into a service like the SiteLock Malware Scanner for automatic security and coverage to help you identify any issues quickly and prevent them altogether.

3) Choose Content Wisely

As you start researching website improvements, you may hear the phrase “content is king” quite frequently. And while strong content is invaluable for any website, it doesn’t mean that lots of content is always best. Prioritize cleverness and clarity in your messages. Experts suggest that keeping your content at a minimum of 800 words is best. Oftentimes, it takes that many words just to convey all of the information and to get your point across. Spend some time creating thought-provoking and unique posts that people will actually want to read.

 

Be sure that your content is regular, fresh, and well-written. In this case, no blog is often better than a bad blog, so if you don’t have the time or resources to keep it updated, you might want to cut it altogether.

4) Respond to User Behaviors

If you don’t already use a web analytics tool to track user behaviors, start right away. Gauging visitor usage patterns is the most effective way to figure out what’s working, what’s not working, and what might work. As you’ve likely realized, there does tend to be a typical expected flow for a website, so if your website doesn’t follow this typical pattern, it probably seems unintuitive to your user base.

 

As you are upgrading and repairing your website, make sure you are acting in a timely manner. Be proactive, not reactive; don’t wait around for something to go wrong and then fix it. But this doesn’t mean you should rush into anything either. It’s important that you take the time and energy now to ensure you have a good website that will be readily adaptable to future growth than to rush to release a website that is not user-friendly.  Take the time to do some research and figure out what exactly you need and what will be the most effective way of making it happen.

 

SHARE