Internet marketing opportunities have been growing at faster rates every year, and the importance of your website is higher than ever. Your website is how you tell your business’s story to current and future customers. It should be the one-stop shop for everything that has to do with your business. From finding information, to portraying your brand, to showing off your awesome work, your website is always going to be one of the first places internet browsers stop when searching for information and more regarding you and your business. While making sure your website is modern, cleanly designed, and well-kept with your brand is very important, there also are so many things that lie beneath the surface of your website that can make a huge difference with viewings, time spent on your pages, and the overall usability of your site. Here’s a few of our tips to making sure your website is better than ever this New Year:
1. Authentic and Updated Branding and Content
Make sure your branding, color scheme, photos, and content are updated and authentic to the story you’re trying to tell your potential customers. Some of the most common problems with business webpages are outdated material and branding. Using a modern, current logo and adding less stock photos and more authentic material coming straight from your business gives visitors a reason to stay and explore your page. In addition to graphic content and on-brand color schemes, making sure the information about your business is always updated (e.g., your address, mission, “About Us” pages, products, and customer testimonials, etc.) ensures visitors of your page have all the correct information they need to make that important connection with you as a seller.
2. Load Speeds
Slow load times are huge when a visitor views a webpage for the first time. In a world of instant gratification and 4G LTE speeds, people can be quite impatient…as in, 4 seconds being far too long impatient. The difference of making a sale or not can absolutely rely upon your site’s load speeds. Not only that, your business’s SEO rating can also drop due to poor load speeds. Regularly monitoring how fast your site loads, seeing how easy it is to navigate in a timely manner, making regular improvements to your site’s load speed is essential when considering what needs to be changed beneath the exterior layers of your website.
3. Security
Does your website have an SSL certificate? If not, 2018 is your year to get one. An SSL certificate creates a safe space for customers to make connections via purchase, information transfers, location services, etc., while browsing your site. The last thing you would want in the New Year is to land your business in hot water over misappropriate information of a customer because your website was not secured. Check out our previous blog regarding SSL certificates to learn more!
4. Include Your Social Media Buttons
With millions of users around the world, it’s no lie that social media has become a prominent piece of most modern people’s lives. If your business has social media accounts, that’s great. But is everyone interested in your business aware of that? Placing buttons for your social media handles seems like a simple task, but doing so allows users to build connections between all of the content released about your business. This is another small fix that can yield large results with the communication between you and your customer.
5. Responsive Design
According to the web analytics firm, StatCounter, mobile and tablet browsing overtook desktop browsing for the first time in 2016 with 51.3% of taking place via mobile technology; and, that number has been growing every single year since. So, it’s crucial to consider whether your site works efficiently on all browsing platforms. Making your site responsive not only makes your webpage easier to view, but it also opens your site to a wider daily audience. Not being able to view or use your webpage on a mobile phone can be frustrating to consumers looking for quick information, which can, at times, make them question your site’s professionalism and legitimacy.
BG Digital Group can help you bring your website back to life in 2018 by updating and adding all the points discussed above. We understand exactly what it takes to design a website worth visiting and worth exploring. From security, to graphic design, to load speeds, we have you covered every step of the way to making your site modern, user-friendly, and tailored to your business’ brand. If you’re ready to make your website better than ever, contact us today to get started.
