So, you’ve set up your business website and everything is in place – that’s all sorted for the foreseeable, right? Wrong! It’s all well and good setting up a website but you need to make sure that it is being seen by the right target market, that it is functional and that all of the information is current. You need to troubleshoot and update your website on an ongoing basis to ensure that it is achieving its purpose. As well as updating it as you go along, you also have to consider redesigns or revamps of your site every 3 or 4 years. If you already have a dynamic online presence, this should be easier to achieve than a total overhaul.
Here is why you need to regularly update your business website…
Goals
As a business, your short term goals are always going to be changing. Whether you want more contact forms submitted through your website than the previous month or you seek an increase of hits on a specific webpage, your website needs to be tailored towards your goals – if you utilise Google Analytics you can track and compare your website visitor’s user activity data in detail.
So, if you want to push a certain section of your website, you need to promote it. This could be by putting a prominent link to it on your homepage, sharing it via social media, linking to it through ads and so on. It is an art that must be nurtured. For help and more information on how to achieve goals and conversions through your website, check out website design in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Algorithms
Those pesky algorithms… always one step ahead, always changing. The Google algorithms dictate where your website will rank on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Your website needs to be Search Engine Optimised to reach the right target audience. There are so many different elements that play a part in this, from keywords and titles (optimised content), metadata, user demographics and more. Your website has to take all of this into account and be updated when there are changes implemented regarding the algorithms.
Having ‘expert’ blog posts relating to your industry will mean your website should show up in search results when prospective clients are searching certain queries. For example, if you have a boiler business, and you post an article on your website titled ‘why is my boiler not turning on’, then there’s a chance that someone searching that term online will come across your website and could subsequently get in touch with you for assistance. It could also improve your domain authority, again increasing the likelihood of your site ranking higher.
User experience
If you have bad UX, your customers are going to bounce off your site and you will lose sales. You have to ensure that your website has a fast load speed, is optimised for different browsers and devices, is clear to navigate, and that the information is relevant, amongst other factors. This can be done in a number of ways – it is important you regularly test your website for issues. Do this on your phone, tablet, and computer, through different web browsers. Click all of the buttons, make sure they work, ensure the imagery isn’t distorted, notice load speeds, see how many steps it takes to reach certain webpages and look at how well designed it is as a whole, picking up where there could be room for improvement. Problems can sprout up over time which is why you must do these checks regularly.
As you can see from above, an ideal website needs regular maintenance to stay on top. If this all seems overwhelming to you, you can look into outsourcing some of these tasks to take the weight off or to at least help you out initially whilst you get to grips with everything.
