Your website is essential to your business. It’s your virtual storefront in a digital world. So it’s critical that it correctly portrays your business AND provides an engaging user experience (UX) that brings in revenue. Here are 4 ways you can create a website that delivers the kind of UX that generates revenue day in and day out.
1. Stay on top of your website’s visual appearance and brand consistency.
Does your website look like it’s stuck in 2002? Sites that look dated or untouched are usually considered untrustworthy by their audiences (not to mention the all-powerful search engines). Consistently updating the look, feel, and theme of your website is one way to show you are invested in your users’ experiences. Using WordPress, you can easily add and update fonts, images, and page designs on your website.
Your branding is another reason to check in on your website’s appearance. Have you updated your logo or brand colors since you published your website? It’s important to always provide your customers with consistent branding, from your website to your social platforms and downloadable content.
2. Review and improve your website’s SEO.
Continually reviewing your website’s SEO is critical if you want a positive rating on Google. Search engines constantly crawl your website, looking for different information, including broken pages, broken links, site speed, and the effectiveness of your overall design. Google also ranks content based on authority, which is directly tied to a steady creation of target-focused content (like blog posts) on topics you have expertise in. By investing in your website’s SEO, you can find significant opportunities for improvement that will grow your business.
In addition, your website’s search performance is based on your use of keywords, webpage metadata, your mobile presence, and your featured image optimization. High SERP (search engine results page) rankings aren’t something you achieve just by throwing in some needed keywords or optimized headers but learning the basics will set your website on the right path. In WordPress, using the Yoast plugin, you can see where your SEO might be lacking, and what areas you should focus on.
One more thing to remember: SEO is not a “set-it-and-forget-it” exercise. Nor will a #1 SERP ranking occur overnight. BUT search failure is guaranteed if you don’t do even the basics. We’ve written an informative series of articles covering a range of SEO topics — start raising your search game now.
3. Design a website that is responsive both on mobile and desktop.
The average number of people visiting a business’s website has skyrocketed in the last 8 months. Since September, HubSpot reported that North American website traffic has maintained an increase of 30+% over pre-COVID levels. This means that for many of your prospects and customers, their experience on your website is their first interaction with your business. It’s more crucial than ever to give your prospects an experience that will keep them on your website longer.
How users visit your site is also important to remember when creating a responsive website design. Since 2017, mobile has generated about half of all website traffic worldwide. Furthermore, Google’s mobile-first indexing means that your website’s ranking will be negatively impacted if you haven’t designed your site with mobile in mind.
Regardless of how someone finds your website, the user experience is essential. You wouldn’t bring customers into an office that’s still under construction, right? Forcing a customer to wander from door to door until they happen upon the right office would be inexcusable. From design to development, we encourage creating a website that revolves around an experience that’s easy to navigate, invites longer stays, and drives increased lead generation, whether they visit on the computer or mobile.
Do You Know The 10 Critical Questions You Should Ask About Your Website?
4. Keep your website platform’s plugins up-to-date.
To create a unique and attractive website design without the headache
of managing the CSS or HTML within a website, we always recommend WordPress. Within WordPress, you can add plugins to your website to improve user experience. A plugin is a piece of software containing functions that can be added to a WordPress website and can extend functionality or add new features to your site.
Plugins are also vital security safeguards. Missing updates can leave your website (and your visitors) vulnerable to hackers and malicious parties that will exploit the weak spots in your applications, plugins, and software. By updating your plugins, you can increase site security and provide peace of mind for users. Creating an experience that your customers trust and enjoy increases the likelihood that they will pay for your services.
WordPress will tell you what plugins are active on your site (Yoast, WordFence, or WooCommerce, for instance) and let you know if/when they should be updated. Keeping up with these plugins means you are always aware of the new features and updates that can help your site run smoothly.
Start optimizing your website today.
Running a website audit on your website will provide insight on current page load times, any broken pages or links, the current status of your webpage metadata (H1s, keywords, and image alt text), and more. The search engine algorithms are always changing and being on top of your SEO is the best way to keep your site competitive.
Providing a positive and memorable website user experience doesn’t have to be a heavy lift.
Your website should work for you. These four areas of focus are by no means an exhaustive list, but they can help you quickly get started on tuning up your website for better performance. By building a responsive site that focuses on engaging user experience, you’ll pave the path for increased lead generation and revenue.