Do you cringe every time someone mentions your website? Is it looking a little out dated? In the long term you know you need to approach a web designer (or us!) to get your site bubbling along, but surely there is something you can do now?
If you can set aside one hour to action these 4 basic tips, your website will at least be on the road to recovery. Start your engines!
1. Review and reduce your content
A common mistake businesses make is having too much content. Review the copy on your website. At a glance: are there too many words? Do you explain clearly what you do and what you want the user to do? If not, remember to keep it simple and get to your point within 2 paragraphs. People do not read long copy. Use headers and bullet points to simplify your message and reduce page bounces.
2. Contact information
Every website should have contact and address details on the contact page and in the footer. Having an online presence means building a website people can trust. Any business that does not make it easy for users to contact them does no favours for online cred.
It’s good practice to make it as easy for people to contact your business. Remember: everyone is different and people will want to reach you through different mediums – phone, mail, social, or visit.
3. Call to actions (CTAs)
There is so much to be said for a strong call to action. However, choosing a call to action is not always obvious. For e-commerce sites it’s easy to think that “BUY NOW” is the most important call to action. And yes it is, but overusing “BUY NOW” all over your site can impact the user experience negatively and send out the wrong brand message. In some cases it can even turn customers off purchasing.
Make sure your calls to action are visible. The easiest way to do this is to visually differentiate your CTAs from the website and background; use bold or a different colour font to make them stand out.
4. Images
Review and replace old images. There is no excuse for bad images. Real images are preferred but can be expensive and/or time consuming to organise a photo shoot. Stock websites have picked up their game in the last few years and now provide a great variety of images that aren’t so “stock like”.
See you next week
Darnelle
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Next week: Next week we look at the latest trends in small business branding
