If you’ve been in business for awhile, and had a business website since the start or soon after, it might be time for a spring-clean or minor overhaul of your business website.
Sometimes we get so busy running our businesses, and with the rest of our lives, that we forget to check in with one of the most important aspects of marketing our business – the business website.
Every website visitor is a potential customer. If your website was created even as little as two years ago, there’s a good chance it might now look a little dated.
It’s time to ask: what does your existing business website say about your business, your products/services, and you?
Here are 5 quick and easy things you can do to get your existing business website looking fresh again, without needing a complete rebuild.
Action 1: Enliven your logo.
Does your logo instantly communicate what your business does and your values? Are the colours, font and style in line with what you’re wanting customers to think about your business?
If not, try a quick re-styling of your old logo. Maybe it’s just the pictorial part of the logo that needs a tweak, or perhaps the font is out of sync with the rest of the image? Or maybe your logo was created a while back and could just do with some updating.
Canva.com is a fantastic tool for easy graphic design, including logos, posters, flyers, blog post banners and social media graphics, without you needing to be an expert. Canva has lots of predone templates which you can not only edit for your logo or other marketing graphics, but also draw inspiration from.
Action 2: Replenish your testimonials.
Social proof is essential these days. If you don’t have any customer testimonials published on your website, consider ways to get some up-to-date reviews from your happiest buyers.
Do you have reviews for your products/services elsewhere like Amazon or Etsy which you could simply re-publish on your website?
Or perhaps reach out to your existing customers and ask. You only need 3-5 testimonials on your website to reassure other website visitors and new customers that they can buy from you with confidence.
Make sure your customer reviews or testimonials are genuine and include a date to show they’re current.
Action 3: Boost your blog.
When was the last time you published a blog post? Remember that blog posts usually have the date of publication visible, so customers will know if the last time you wrote anything for your blog was ages ago. Visitors can be put off if your only blog posts and other content is older than a year.
Commit to publishing something on your blog at least once a month (or more often). Writing blog posts doesn’t have to take up a lot of your time, if you’ve thought about what you’d like to say, and planned each article ahead of time (whenever you have an idea, jot it down to use later for the actual writing).
Publish a mix of different types of content, including product updates, promotions and sales, industry news, articles on topics related to your products/services, reviews, interviews with staff or industry experts, your business values, history of your business, your life story, etc.
The great thing about blog posts is they can be recycled as social media posts, videos and reels to drive traffic to your website and boost sales.
Action 4: Invigorate your website images.
Use images to add visual interest, colour and excitement to your website pages and blog posts.
Make sure any photographs or images of your products/services are clear, high-resolution, in good lighting, and the layout/composition of each image was well thought out. After all, you want website visitors to instantly feel that you are a professional business worthy of their attention and money, and nothing says ‘don’t bother’ faster than bad photographs.
Update any other images, for example in blog posts, with new and modern pictures to ensure your business appears current and in tune. You can use a royalty-free image website like pixabay.com, which has thousands of images for unlimited and commercial use.
WordPress allows you to set a featured image for each blog post, which means the featured image (which could be a blog banner image you’ve created in Canva for that blog post) will display with your blog post excerpt on your main blog page, and at the top of each separate blog post page.
Action 5: Modernize the overall look.
Website styles change over time, with a cleaner, less cluttered style being the norm these days.
Does your website have lots of text, without clearly demarcated sections? This could make it difficult to read, less accessible, and perceived as old-fashioned by your visitors/customers.
Modern websites tend to have more open spaces between sections, and often use blocks, dividers and sub-headings, with result the website content is easier on the eye and visitors can scan to find what they’re looking for without having to wade through tons of text.
If your website is built with WordPress, lots of these types of edits can be done in one go by simply changing the theme and customisation options. After setting a new theme, it’s best to check how each page displays and possibly do some tweaks here and there to ensure it looks good.
If you don’t want to change the overall theme, or if you’re not using WordPress for your website, you could simply edit your website pages by adding more spaces, dividers and sub-headings, and perhaps consider placing some content into coloured boxes/shapes or clearly separate sections, in order to demarcate or highlight it, as appropriate.
Updating your business website is not just about visual attractiveness or customer perceptions.
At the end of the day, an enhanced, up-to-date website will communicate relevance and meaning to potential customers, which should ultimately translate into more sales and loyalty.
Of course, your business website is not the only factor in this regard, but updating it will communicate care, validity, and foresight.
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