9 Tips for redesigning and updating the website
You’ve probably heard of Marie Kondo by now—she sparked a whole cleanup movement and has a Netflix show called “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo.”
Also known as the KonMari method, your goal is to organize your home by getting rid of items that don’t “spark joy.”
While her method applies more to dresser drawers and work spaces, there’s no reason you can’t use Marie Kondo on your website! Just like your home and office, your room needs to be cleaned from time to time.
Here are 9 tips for redesigning and updating your website to help you get the most out of the experience:
Have a happy audit
You can’t see where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been, right? A content audit is about taking an inventory of all the content on your site so you can see what is relevant and what is not.
If you have blog posts that are years old, it’s time to decide if it’s worth repurposing them with updated content or deleting them. We are doing this right now as we prepare to revamp our website. Many of our very old items are being scrapped or repurposed for future, more up-to-date items.
Be careful not to delete a blog post that generates a lot of your traffic, but don’t hang on to every article if the information is no longer relevant or your target audience has changed.
Also, if you have products or services available online, make sure the description and price for each one are up to date.
Review your content strategy
As you conduct your content audit, explore your analytics to see what content people are spending time on and what content is performing poorly.
Once you have a clear picture of your best performing articles, blogs and videos, you can work on creating new and engaging content and/or repurposing the right things.
It can be helpful to create a content calendar that breaks down weeks or months by topic.
Let’s use marketing for health coaches as an example. In January, you might want to focus on healthy eating, breaking bad habits, and doing fun exercises to go along with your New Year’s resolutions.
In June, you could focus on water-based exercises, refreshing summer meals, and the importance of sun protection. Brainstorm to create a list of ideas and go from there!
Make sure your pages look good on mobile devices
You should keep mobile in mind every time you create new content, and now is the time to take a closer look.
Too many business owners put all their energy into website redesign, neglecting this critical part of the user experience. However, some business owners feel that their audience is not using mobile devices to access their site.
This is a bad assumption that can have huge ramifications. Many people browse your website, read your ezine, and check your blog on their smartphones. If in doubt, check your Google Analytics which will tell you how much website traffic is coming from mobile phones.
Make sure web pages are easy to follow, buttons are big enough to click, and you won’t miss any content when viewing it on a smartphone.
check broken links
This is another great way to dust off your website. Broken links not only annoy and potentially drive away visitors (often sending them directly to your competition), they are also bad for your search engine rankings.
There are several tools that allow you to scan your site for broken links, so use them.
Please update your About Us page if necessary
Do you have biographies of employees who left six months ago? Has your company received any new awards or recognitions?
If a potential customer lands on your site and sees outdated information, they’ll think twice before buying from you, so keep your About Us page fresh and polished.
Make sure your software and plugins are up to date
This is essential not only for order, but also for the security of the website.
You may be tempted to ignore these messages telling you to update to the latest version, but they are essential to prevent security vulnerabilities and keep your site running at optimal speed and functionality.
This is especially crucial if you have access to visitor information such as credit card numbers and email addresses.
Consider a site upgrade
Maybe your business has evolved and you want to rebrand your logo. Or maybe you’re looking at photos from two years ago on your “What’s New” page.
Let’s use the example of a health and wellness website design. If a health coach originally worked with millennials on budgets, but now targets pregnant and lactating women for meal and exercise planning, she would need to add brand messaging, photos, and content that pops up for the new target audience.
Small changes can make a big difference, but make sure you’re rebranding for the right reasons if you’re thinking of updating a key part of your brand identity. This is one of my blog articles that might help: The Right Reasons to Rebrand Your Business Logo.
Look for clear calls to action
You need to show visitors what to do, or else they will probably leave. Now is the time to fix clunky CTAs that aren’t working (look at your stats for insights) or find pages where they’re missing.
Here are some things to keep in mind when you’re optimizing your CTAs:
Use actionable text that engages your visitor (think “Download the eBook” not “Click Here”).
Make the call to action a main focus. If you have a lot of links, images, and text vying for attention, your call to action could be lost.
Create urgency with words like “today” and “now.”
Experiment with the first person. According to a study by Unbounce, changing the button text from the second person (“Start your free trial”) to the first person (“Start my free trial”) resulted in a 90% increase in clicks.
Strong call to action for coaching website
speed up your site
Are some pages on your website taking a long time to load?
According to MatchMetrics, 14% of your audience will start shopping on another site if your page loads slowly, and 23% will simply stop the shopping experience or walk away from the computer.
Take a close look at your hosting provider, installed image and video sizes and plugins to start getting to the root of what is causing your lag in responsiveness.
Whether you’re revamping your online presence or need to do a complete website redesign, get professional help if necessary.
Imagine having the time and energy to be creative, network, build strong business relationships and do what you love to do while an experienced, skilled and passionate all-in-one boutique firm relieves you of the burden of knowing how to do it. all yourself.