12 Tips on how to get the most value from your website
Is your website working hard for you? Are you getting maximum value from it?
A website is your 24/7 promotional tool that enables you to reach more people anytime, anywhere.
If you are completely satisfied with how your website is performing then congratulations! You are one of the few businesses who can make that claim, and these tips are probably already being applied, however if you, like majority of businesses out there do want to get more bang from for your buck from your website then please see below these easy tips for gaining maximum value from your website.
1. Think like your customers
What makes a website great depends on who you are trying to attract and the purpose of the site. When you plan, design and asses your site, step into the shoes of your ideal customers. Think about what brought them there, what they want to get from your site and remember not to make assumptions.
2. Reflects your brand
Ensure your website is in direct alignment with your brand. Colours, style, imagery, font, these all convey your brand personality it is important to be a consistent across all communication channels including your entire website.
3. Easy to use and navigate
Make sure it is user friendly and that a visitor can get where they want to go with minimal clicks.
4. Make it responsive
With over 50% of users researching and accessing sites via their mobile or tablet device, it is now more than ever critical that your website is mobile responsive and can be easily accessed using these devices.
5. Optimise your site
It’s no use having a good site if potential customers can’t find it, Search engine optimisation (SEO) essentially revolves around how easy it is to find your site using search engines, most popular being google. This can take time to achieve but if you are persistent with it, it can pay dividends with your organic search results.
6. Call to action
Include easy to find call to actions, make it as easy as possible to make a booking, purchase a product etc. Multiple highly visible prompts in this area is key.
7. Make it easy to get in contact
Ensure it is very easy for people to get in contact with you, have prominent quick contact features that can be easily viewed and are responsive, many people will be on mobile devices and want to be able to instantly connect with you.
8. Have good up to date content
Make sure that you have current and accurate content on our website. Include items such as FAQs, Blogs, about the team and other relevant information to help you quickly tell your story while informing your visitors.
Is your content easy to read? Use headings and bullet points and short easily digestible sentences. Ensure there are no spelling or grammatical errors, and have someone other than the author give the site a thorough review. Visitors don’t like typos and google penalises these too, also avoid using industry jargon, keep it as lay as possible.
9. Social media integration
Integrating relevant social media platforms into your site will also help you to better engage with your audience and increase your reach. With users spending at least 12.5 hours a week on social media and 69% of Australians being regular users, social media is definitely not an area that can be ignored. You can use social media to continually link back to your website too.
10. Visual imagery
Good quality images, videos etc can be a powerful asset for you site. These are fantastic for integrating into your website to assist in breaking up text to make more appealing for visitors. However, ensure pages load quickly and be careful with large files and flash, you don’t want to slow down your site.
11. Affiliation linking
Highlight any strategic alliances on your website and encourage these strategic partners to include links to your website on theirs to increase reach.
12. Monitor and test
No matter how well you designed your website, you will probably still have elements that you can improve. If you aren’t already tracking your website, start doing so now and on a regular basis. You can easily use google analytics for this purpose. Google analytics is a great tool to use and is free, you can monitor how much and type of traffic, how long and what pages were visited and lot’s more.
Wanting to enhance your website and need help to do it? are you seeking assistance with your online or offline marketing presence, please contact leonie@realitymarketing.com.au or call 0423 361 093.
