As a small business owner in an ever-advancing and growing market, your website can be one of your most powerful tools for building your brand and growing your business. It has to look professional but not boring, visually appealing but not cluttered. More importantly, it should serve you and your customers' needs more.
If you're looking to improve your website (and earn more in the process) this year, here are five dead-simple ways to help you get started with its beautiful (and profitable) transformation.
1. Speed it up.
One of the most frustrating experiences you can have when you're shopping online is when it takes ages for a page to load. You can't get a full view of the website's product and services so you end up closing the page and finding another website that will load faster. If this is a problem with your current website, get it corrected by putting fewer images or lowering their resolution. If possible, do not use flash files. You can also try doing a website speed test to see how your website will fare from a slow internet connection. Once you get your website to load as fast as lightning, you'll surely have more happy customers (and more revenue!).
2. Keep it responsive.
Almost half of consumers buy products and services using their mobile devices. With that said, you lose half of your customers if your website isn't mobile-friendly. Choose a theme that matches your brand while being responsive and mobile-friendly, too.
3. Post fresh content.
Your website should have a blog section where you publish content that your customers and visitors will find helpful and relevant. More importantly, the content should be shareable, too so your customers can share it to their social networks (that's free advertising!). Your home page and landing pages should also display the newest deals, promos, and recent content to help your customers see that your business is always up-to-the-moment.
4. Grab Google's attention.
For your website to be found by your customer, you have to make it to Google's search results. You can do this by utilizing the meta data portion of your content management system (CMS). Enter snippets which describe your content as accurately as possible while adding an element of intrigue to make your customers click on it when it turns up in Google's search results.
5. Review your analytics.
So you've done step 1 to 4 and got new customers buying from your website. However, the work doesn't stop there. The next thing you need to do is to study how your customers behave during their visit to your website. And because Google is genius and generous enough, they created Google Analytics, a free tool which will help you understand how your customers behave and how you can optimize your website according to your findings. So take the time to sit down once a month to study
this so you can continuously make your website beneficial to your customers (and profitable to you).
Improving your website takes work and is a continuous process. Stay on top of every trend and tweak your website according to the results you've monitored and you'll be on your way to establishing your brand and beating your competitors in the process. Good luck!