4 Steps to Upgrade Website Content on a Budget
Having a website is a requirement in the Digital Age for reaching clients beyond your direct network and creating a professional presence for your company. However, if your website isn’t effectively attracting a quality audience and driving them to make a purchase, it might mean that you simply need to upgrade website content. While some companies might look at their disappointing site statistics and jump to the conclusion that they need to rebuild or redesign their website, there are several ways to quickly enhance a website when looking at content alone.
Before embarking on the costly and time-consuming process of a website overhaul, take these 4 quick steps to maximize the effectiveness of your current website:
1. Quality Images (and Videos)
Take a look at some of the most powerful brands out there and their websites–Nike, Budweiser, Coca-Cola. Although they are in different industry sectors, all of their websites feature very high quality and bold images or video content throughout the website, and especially on the homepage. Although your website text is undoubtedly important, using images or other media is crucial to exuding brand authority and confidence and to quickly communicate your product or service before your website visitor clicks away.
When working with the Junior League of Billings, we focused on creating a bold homepage with large, clear, and powerful images to represent the large impact and humanitarian mission of this organization in the Billings, Montana region.
It doesn’t take being a professional photographer or videographer to create quality media content for your website. Ask around your community to see if anyone has a nice camera or even schedule a fun photo session with your iPhone and some good lighting.
Technically, speaking try to aim for 1920x1080px images as this is the currently the most common and largest screen size. Therefore, images that size will not noticeably blur on most screens. Generally, your source images should be as large as possible, then you can crop and resize them to fit their purpose.
2. Organized Sitemap
Your website could be considered an online map that a visitor must follow to reach the treasure of your core product or service. Therefore, it’s highly important that your sitemap supports and encourages your website visitor along the journey to becoming a customer. If you haven’t already, take a moment to draw something like a tree of your website. Then ask yourself, does it make sense? Do your pages link in a logical way? Are your website visitors arriving at the opportunity to make a purchase? Here’s just one example of how to boil all of your answers into a basic sitemap:
Source: WebpageFX
Taking the time to organize the pages of your website is a simple way to reduce the bounce rate of your website by keeping your visitors engaged and on track as they explore your product or service. In addition, having an organized sitemap can even contribute better SEO as your website is easier for both people and search engine “crawlers” to navigate.
3. Dynamic On-page Content
Now that you’ve organized your sitemap, it’s time to reevaluate the content that is actually on each page. The average website visitors’ attention span is decreasing all the time and according to Tyton Media, visitors take about 10 seconds to scan a website for an impression and 0.05 seconds to form an opinion. That’s a lot of pressure. At the larger level, take a moment to ignore what your text is actually saying and examine how it looks at this split-second glance.
Try to break down your text into short paragraphs and use headings to break-up big chunks of words. Then include other features like call-to-action buttons, forms, and polls that provide content that visitors can engage with and which will thereby hold their attention.
For the RMS-AAPG 2017 Section meeting, we not only made the website fun to navigate with a themed-beer tap menu but also created an organized sitemap around each of the top menu categories. As a result website visitors can easily “tap” into the pages they need. In addition, we worked with RMS-AAPG to upgrade website content using multiple sections and a combination of text styles on the homepage that call attention to different aspects the conference. Plus with a variety of call to action buttons, visitors know exactly where to click for additional information.
4. Highlighting Your Funnel
The last step to upgrade website content is to focus on your marketing funnel. If you haven’t already thought about this trajectory for visitors to navigate your site, take a moment to think about how a visitor goes from landing on your site to contacting your company, gathering more information to consider your product, and then eventually making a purchase.
For example, if you want visitors to contact you to receive a demo, then your website content should be organized around a form for them to submit their information or a simple block of text that loudly provides your contact information. They shouldn’t be able to miss it!
With just a few small adjustments you can upgrade website content quickly and easily to maximize your website and present a professional and engaging gateway to the products and services you offer. Before throwing a lot of time and money into a total website rebuild, try using these steps to give your website a makeover. Then, track your metrics and watch your return on investment grow!