The Initial Excitement
We all get that anticipation of the finish date of our website build. The day we celebrate with our friends and co-workers our shiny and new site. Once they all agree the site looks great and everyone loves it, it is time to sit back and let it rake in the leads.
No.
No.
No.
A Website is never finished. It doesn’t work well by itself.
Your Website is Sales Staff
Think of your website as a salesperson you just hired on behalf of your business. You can’t let them out into the world to sell you without the tools to do the job. You need to be watching their progression, giving them feedback and further training as they learn to understand their role better. A website needs all these kinds of help too. You need to your train your site to sell you by maintain original investment.
Strengthen, Update and Repair your Site
After the initial website build there are so many tools or plug-ins that can be added to make your website better. Of most importance are security plug-ins. You need to add to your initial build to ensure your site does not go down or get destroyed by malware. Beyond security there are great and often FREE pug-ins for SEO analysis, marketing automation and speeding up your website. Once these are installed the reality is they need to be updated and repaired to keep your site running smoothly. Maintaining plug-ins is a monthly job you can do yourself or that PressHero.co would gladly do for you.
Maintain your Site for SEO Rankings
If you want to remain relevant to google you have to maintain your site for SEO rankings. It is like giving your salesperson product info. Google does not like static sites. For you to rank on google your site needs to be dynamic, constantly changing. What these changes do is give Google information to process. The more you give it the more often google comes to see if there is more. The more google comes back the higher you will get on page rankings.
There are two main ways you can keep your site SEO relevant, changes, updates, and content creation. Updating the main pictures on your site creates renewed visual interest for your clients and helps you rank. Updating sales and promotions weekly, monthly or seasonally gives google another reason to come back. But the best bang for your buck in regards to SEO is content creation. Writing blogs gives Google a wealth of information about what you do and what kinds of people are going to want to look at your site. Sites that blog should be blogging minimally once a week, but even bi-weekly or monthly makes a difference. Sites blogging more than once a week are far more likely to reach the tops of their charts.
Maximize a Sites Potential with Analysis
Your salesman is a lot more likely to succeed with a plan and that is what site analysis gives you. Using Google Analytics and visiting tracker software you can ensure your site is being used to its maximum sales potential. These will show you what pages your clients like, where they are clicking or hovering and how they are scrolling. Are your visitors taking unexpected turns or procrastinating on clicks you want them to make. Knowing where you are losing them allows you to revamp those areas to improve retention and closure on the actions you want them to take. Giving a site a spring clean in this way is always a good idea. Create that better user experience that leads to sales.
Regularly Redesign your Site
We can all tell the difference between a six month old site and a five year old one. Your website is often your first point of contact with the public and it is important to have curb appeal. An outdated site reflects poorly on your business giving the impression you don’t care. Clearly that is not the case. Give your viewers a site that graphically and functionally reflects how awesome you truly are. Redesign your site every three years.
