Every January signals the influx of New Year’s resolutions. While most people make New Year’s resolutions for themselves personally, business owners make resolutions for their businesses. This article will focus on New Year’s resolutions for your website. Think about what you need to make sure that your website is performing properly and meeting your business goals. Keep your website in mind when evaluating our list of 8 New Year’s resolutions for your website.
Keep Google’s Mobile First Initiative in Mind
If you have a website for your business, chances are you already have made the necessary changes to ensure that your site is viewable on mobile devices. This year, Google will be making more changes to the mobile first initiative, which means it gives priority search rankings to sites that are mobile friendly. If you haven’t changed your website’s design to be responsive, it isn’t too late, but now is the time for action. Instead of changing your site design to make it responsive, change it to be mobile-first and then responsive to be seen on desktops. Internet usage on mobile devices has surpassed desktop usage, so your website should reflect that.
Refresh Your Content
Each year, you should refresh your content and make sure it is up to date. If you refer to the year or how long you have been in business in terms of years, change the wording to reflect 2018. In addition to just those small tweaks, audit your content and see what needs to be revised and redone. You should resolve to change or update the content on at least one page a month and add at least one page of new content each month. That can be in the form of a blog or a content page. A continual refresh of content will help your website to appear user friendly and the search engines like that fresh content too.
The Website Content Diet
For some websites, a content diet is necessary. If you audit your content and realize that it is bloated, too wordy, or too complicated with industry jargon, a content diet may be in order. Adding content is a good thing (just like we mentioned above) but in some cases, bloated or wordy content can be too much and your website needs to go on a content diet. Resolve to make sure that your keywords aren’t repeated too often or stuffed into content so much that the paragraphs don’t make sense. Spread your keywords throughout your content but don’t overuse them.
Get Organised
Getting organised is one of those resolutions you might use in your personal life too. However, by getting organised for your website, we mean getting your strategies and processes down on paper. Create a content strategy, a social posting calendar, and an analytics reporting process. This will help you be more organised and can be done in formats that can be shared throughout the team so that everyone is aware of their tasks and the goals at hand. The person on the team who is the lead on each task should be the lead on the shared file or calendar to make everyone responsible for meeting the challenge and all deadlines set forth. These should be subtasks of your overall marketing strategy and business plan.
Resolve Errors
Depending on your platform, sometimes error pages just happen. Some are related to products no longer offered or changed names, and some are errors created due to other reasons. No matter the reason, take the time at the beginning of each year to run a 404 error page audit and then make the necessary corrections. Error pages can hurt your search engine rankings as well as the user experience for your site’s visitors. Correcting them will help both areas and also ensure that your website appears professional.
Be Consistent
Consistency is important in everything you do and your website needs to be consistent too. Be consistent in terms of the design and the voice of your content. Your website’s design should be consistent throughout all the way through to the shopping cart. If you have an older style design that changes completely once your customers reach the shopping cart or checkout, you are likely losing customers and money. Many website visitors will lose trust with a website if all of the sudden everything looks different when you are about to ask them for their personal information and money. Make sure that the shopping cart matches the design of the rest of your website so that it doesn’t affect your conversions. The same thoughts on consistency apply to your content and the voice of your content. If you have multiple content writers, make sure that they all use the same content strategy and format. This avoids confusion for your customers and makes your website look more professional.
Employ New Technology
Websites can become obsolete quickly if you aren’t on a platform that includes automatic upgrades, it might be time for a switch. If your website platform is up-to-date, check with your developer or IT team to ensure that you are accessing all of the latest features. The latest technology is important for security upgrades as well as to deliver the best user experience for your visitors.
Try Something New
Trying something new is a great resolution for anyone or any business. Business success and marketing are all about testing new ideas. Try something new, make sure to attach reporting to it so that you can see if it works or not. Continue tweaking your new idea based on test results and keep the process going for continued renewal and continued success.
Summary and Takeaways for Your Business
We hope that you have some great takeaways for your business from our list of ideas for New Year’s resolutions for your website. This list can be overwhelming, so don’t try to do everything at once, you may not even need everything on the list for your website. Make a plan and do what is best for your company. What is the last step in the website resolution process? Make sure you are promoting your website with all of your advertising. At Gopromotional.co.uk, we specialise in promotional products. Your website and logo should be on all of your advertising materials including your free giveaways that make up your marketing mix.