One of the most powerful marketing tools you have is your website. Whether you have a B2B website, a B2C eCommerce site, or an SaaS platform that’s meant to target both B2B and B2C consumer groups, your website should be designed to pull in web traffic and keep visitors engaged long enough to do business with you.
Older, outdated websites simply won’t serve your digital marketing needs, and you’re probably aware of that.
But what you might not be aware of is that your website could be outdated even if it isn’t that old.
Even if you revamped your website as recently as three years ago, it could be considered outdated by today’s technological standards.
Updates in the website design and technology space are constantly forthcoming. It seems like on an almost monthly basis, Google devises a new algorithm that effectively rewards those of us who keep ourselves “in the know” while punishing everyone else.
If you aren’t hypervigilant in terms of watching every single Google change and emerging trend in web design, there could be a chance that your website is currently not up to date.
Don’t worry if that’s the case. We’ve got the fixes.
In this article, you’ll learn if your website is up to date, and what you can do if it’s not.
If your website or eCommerce site does not have a responsive web design, then it’s not up to date. But what is a responsive web design, and why is it important?
Responsive web designs ensure that a website will display properly on every device regardless of the device’s screen size, display orientation, or operating system. The reason it’s important to use a responsive web design for your website or eCommerce store is so that visitors can use any device to explore your site. With a responsive web design, a particular user can visit your site from their smartphone one day and then visit your site from their laptop computer later on and the site itself will “remember” them. Meaning, if they added items to an online shopping cart using their desktop computer, they can visit your site days later using their smartphone and finally complete the online checkout process.
Listen, we all have our preferences and our unique tastes. But the goal is to update your website and keep it up to date, which means that you may have to set aside your personal feelings and trust an experienced website designer to revamp your site using a trendy design.
User experience will make or break your website, and an aspect of a returning user’s experience is your website’s interface. Even websites that offer exceptional UX still need to be redone every so often in order to ensure that longtime visitors continue to feel wowed when they visit your website.
In the world of digital marketing, a call-to-action, or CTA, is a design element that prompts a visitor to take an immediate action. Including CTAs on your website is a must if you want to stay up to date.
In fact, CTAs are integral to ensuring that your website provides visitors an interactive experience. CTAs essentially nudge visitors to take a specific action such as signing up for your newsletter, creating a login account, enrolling in your loyalty rewards program, or downloading exclusive content. The actual language used within the CTA matters, and the trick is to use clear commands so that your audience understands exactly what you want them to do and how to do it. Typical CTAs that you might be familiar with are “Buy Now,” “Subscribe,” “Sign Up,” “Request Demo,” and “Request a Call Back.” You might be familiar with CTAs that are used in social media advertisements, for example, but we’re here to tell you that you should actually have a CTA on every web page across your site.
Calls-to-action invite website visitors to engage with your brand on a deeper level, which means that, yes, they belong on your website. The most valuable data you can collect is website visitor data, and smartly placed CTAs can help you do that.
Including a CTA on every web page isn’t overkill. The trick is to make sure that the specific CTA you use on a web page is completely relevant to the page content itself. Include a newsletter subscription signup field at the bottom of your blog articles. Add a rewards program enrollment button on your eCommerce checkout page. Each CTA you use should be logical and helpful.
Website speed, logical site navigation, and overall website usability are absolutely critical in terms of reducing your website bounce rate. But how can a business owner like yourself assess whether or not your site is fast enough to provide an excellent user experience?
There are two areas that will need your attention. Those areas are page speed and overall website speed. While these two might appear to be the same, they’re actually different, and both need to be fast. The term page speed refers to the amount of time a web visitor will have to wait before an individual web page loads and is ready to go. On the other hand, the term site speed refers to the average speed of all of your web pages. Page speed is important to website visitors, and it doesn’t go without saying that the faster the page speed, the better the user experience. Consumers not only want websites to load fast, they expect web pages to perform properly within the blink of an eye. If a web page has any lag, the chances of a visitor abandoning the web page, or the website altogether, will skyrocket.
Your website appears to load quickly and perform well for you. Awesome. But you can’t stop there. It’s your responsibility to make sure that your entire site, meaning every web page, loads fast and performs correctly on all devices and operating systems.
The actual speed of your website and speed of each web page on your site doesn’t have to be a mystery. There are excellent speed test tools out there, but our favorite is Google’s Speed Test because it’s free and accurate.
It’s 2021, which means that by now you should have caught on to the fact that at the very least you need to link your social media accounts to your website. But if that’s all you’ve done, then not only are you keeping your site outdated, but you’re also hurting your web traffic.
Social media marketing is an ideal method to drive social followers to your website and improve conversion rates. You probably understand this, which is why you’re managing several social media accounts for your business and posting regularly. But the relationship between your website and social media accounts should be modernized. Yes, promoting your website on social media will elevate web traffic to your site, but you also need to use your website to amplify your social media content, gain followers, and spread awareness about your brand online. That being said, you don’t actually want web visitors to bounce away from your site as soon as they click your social media icon links. In fact, including social media icon links on your website is downright outdated.
At the risk of sounding harsh, displaying social media icons that link to your social profiles looks outdated. Social icons were a design trend for about a decade. They had a good run. But the sun has set on this trend.
Modernized and truly on-trend websites now display social media content feeds so that site visitors can scroll through recent social posts. But don’t say farewell to clickable social icons just yet! You can and should place clickable social icons above your social media content feeds so that visitors can find and follow your social profiles.
There is one big, fat, never ending benefit that comes with maintaining a blog on your business website or eCommerce site—SEO optimization. Every newly published article provides Google bots with fresh keywords and longtail keyword phrases that they will analyze and use to elevate your overall website search engine ranking.
Blogging is a highly effective marketing method to build brand awareness, while also establishing expertise within an industry. Best of all, blogging tends to be inexpensive, especially when you’re capable of writing your own quality blog articles and don’t have to hire a professional content writer. As we just mentioned, blogging naturally boosts overall website search engine ranking because every published article introduces new SEO keywords to Google. But that’s not all blogging can do for your business. Regularly posting blog articles will ensure that your website is perceived by online audiences as modern and up-to-date. The reason for this is because articles have the power to strengthen relationships with your existing and new customers.
At the top of 2021, Google implemented a new site ranking algorithm that’s designed to reward long-form blog content. Does this mean that the algorithm will punish shorter blogs by default? That’s a possibility, which is why it’s a good idea to aim to hit about 2,400 words per article.
Micro blog articles are emerging as a new trend, and while they won’t actually benefit your Google ranking, they could definitely benefit your readers who want bite-sized, yet potent, content. A micro article should be between 300 to 500 words and deliver one pointer, tip, trick, helpful list, or how-to lesson.
If you’re unsure about whether or not your website is overdue for an upgrade, here are eight easy ways to make that determination. If most or all of the following statements are true for you, it means that, yes, it’s time to update your website.
● You haven’t added new content to your website in more than a month
● You can’t remember the last time you updated your homepage
● Your website doesn’t display properly on your smartphone
● You aren’t keeping yourself informed about Google’s ongoing algorithm changes
● You don’t regularly analyze the speed and performance of your website
● Your website bounce rate is through the roof
● Your website hasn’t generated any leads in a long time
● Your website still uses Flash
● Your website will crash if there’s too much traffic
Were you nodding your head “yes” to most of these statements?
If your website is overdue for an update, the website and development team at FTx 360 can revamp your business site or eCommerce store in no time. Our web developers and SEO experts can check your site speed, implement appropriate revisions & modifications, and also build powerful web pages as needed that will ensure visitors stay on, explore, and engage with your website. Show your social feeds and stream video content with our interactive web designs. Contact us today to get started.
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