A good website is undoubtedly the centerpiece of your business. It also has the potential to be one of the most powerful tools of your marketing strategies.
As technology is evolving at a fast pace, your website might tend to become old and obsolete. Redesigning your website is one solution, however, it often involves huge expenditure. Let’s look at some simpler ways to improve your website.
Tips and Techniques to Improve your Website
1. Website navigation
Be empathetic to your visitors by helping them find what they are looking for with your site’s navigation. Descriptive navigations are of great assistance as visitors can easily find what they are searching for on your website.
When setting up or redesigning your navigation – think of how your visitors will search for and find your information – NOT how you think it should be presented. Put the shoe on the other foot!
2. Calls to Action (CTA’s)
By using attractive calls to action, users can easily navigate through your website. You can use action words or verbs to prompt users to take action. Make sure you highlight the benefit to the visitor in your CTA.
Again – think about the journey you would like a visitor to take through your site and map out that path so it’s clear – move from page to page with click-throughs and CTA’s. Make it simple and intuitive. Also – let your visitor know what will happen when they click – reduce their feeling of risk in doing so.
A word on “Submit”
‘Submit’ only works well as a CTA if you provide dominatrix services.”
– Michael Aagaard, Unbounce
TIP – Find a contrasting colour for your CTA buttons. For example, if your site is predominately white, use yellow or warm orange or red that stands out.
3. Use of Bullets
Bullets make your website informative and attractive. Users can easily scan all the information required within a short time. You can also use attractive icons as bullets to enhance its appearance. Numbered lists also help.
It’s about making the information easy to access – bulleted lists can be easier to search through than pages or paragraphs of text.
4. Use Genuine and/or Beautiful Images
Visitors are quick to notice websites with stock images, some of these are super-cheesy! Instead, replace these with genuine photographs of real people and situations which support your content.
There are many great sites for free images – see my recent Resources post. Stay true to your brand and the look and feel of your site.
TIP – Don’t forget the human element!
People are drawn to people and they want to know, like and trust you before they buy from you. Show your website visitors the people in your tribe and tell them about your culture. Remember – people do business with people.
5. Use Well Written and Correct Headings
Using keywords in your content heading is an excellent way to improvise your website. Good headings are ranked by search engines and so it has the potential to increase your website ranking.
On this same topic – using correct alt text with related keywords and phrases for your images is really important also.
6. Incorporate Testimonial Pages
The truth is- no one visits testimonial pages so if you have good clients with good reviews, then make sure it is seen. You can do this by scattering testimonials throughout the webpage. Don’t just keep these on a specific testimonials page.
TIP – Add your Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
Your UVP (or Mission statement, True North) tells the visitor what you do and why you do it. Add it to your homepage, add it to your blog or about page. Let visitors know exactly what they will be getting if they hire you, buy your product, subscribe to your newsletter or read your blog.
It goes something like this –
“[our company] is where [our audience] gets [what information] that offers [what benefit].”
7. Mobile friendly site
Web pages that are mobile friendly rank higher than its counterparts as most of the people access websites through mobiles. Websites which are not mobile optimized are now penalized by Google.
The use of a responsive site is ideal – your website should always display well no matter the screen size. It’s still worth testing this – sometimes results are unexpected!
8. Consistency
To provide a beautiful experience for your user, you need to keep the content of your website consistent. This means the heading, font size; button colours, spaces and design must align with your content theme. A drastic change in the size or colour of your web page can confuse your visitor.
9. Scroll Option
Most of us believe that visitors never scroll down but that is quite untrue. People often scroll till the end of the page. So there is no need to clutter the top fold of your web page and make it appear like a total disaster. It can seem quite unappealing. So remember to keep some white space around the titles and texts.
Make it easy for visitors to either scroll back to the top Or keep your navigation constantly visible so they can move to the next page with ease at all times.
10. Thank you Pages
This is one of the most effective ways to improve your website. It’s a great way to keep your visitors engaged. It gives your visitors the opportunity to follow you on social media, download an ebook and so forth.
Don’t make the mistake of simply thanking someone on these pages – if they’ve landed here they have probably already taken action on your site – leverage their momentum and move them another step – further into a sales funnel or down an information path.
Conclusion
Taking the time to implement these website improvement strategies can improve your site ranking and it’s user-friendliness. These are just some of the techniques that can be used to revamp your website without spending a fortune.
Don’t forget to also take steps to ensure that your webpage loads quickly as it can be quite frustrating when pages take time to load. Our modern attention span isn’t what it used to be!
SEO Toolkit
Our step by step Website DIY toolkit
- Gets your website higher in Google’s results page – Using the techniques in our toolkit will mean that when potential buyers search for your keywords, your website will appear higher up on the Google results page.
- Gets more traffic to your website
- Gets your website optimised quickly
Online Business Manager and Virtual Assistant, Health Business Supporter, Lean Process Improvement Coach and former Physio. I have a passion for the Health Industry and your business success!