How to Know When It’s Time to Update Your Website
At the beginning of 2023, we published a blog about business goals for the New Year, one of which was to refresh your website. Today we’re taking a bit of a deeper dive into that topic and discussing the details it entails.
First, you’ll do a website audit to evaluate what updates your site needs. We’ve broken it down into two stages. The first is more foundational and will help you decide whether it’s time for a new website entirely. The second stage is more maintenance-focused and is meant to suggest updates you should make at least every year to ensure your website accurately reflects your business's current state.
Stage One
Was your website updated or created within the last 5 years? With the speed at which technology and visuals are evolving, there’s a good chance that a website over 5 years old has lost functionality and can be out-of-date, missing out on features that today’s viewers are accustomed to with other sites.
Is it functional and easy to explore? Does your navigation provide a clear guide to the site’s organization and allow users to easily access the page and/or information they’re looking for?
Is your site mobile-friendly? More than half of website viewers look at your website through mobile phones. Does your website’s design adapt to hand-held devices? Does it stay easy to navigate, or become more complicated to scroll through?
Is it visually appealing? Does your site resonate with your audience, or does it feel outdated?
Stage Two
If you answered yes to the questions in Stage One, congratulations on your functional site! This next stage is to help you refine the details and ensure no aspect of your website is overlooked.
If you are a service-based business, does your portfolio reflect your best and most recent work? You might be swamped with projects and feel too busy to update your site, but if you want to maintain your workflow, it’s important to be proactive and not put this task at the bottom of your to-do list. Your dream client might be scoping out your site as we speak and viewing examples of your work that don’t line up with the level of expertise that you are currently providing. You don’t want to miss out on that potential client that could have been a great working relationship because they were searching for the services you currently provide but didn’t see proof of those services on your website.
Do your prices or packages reflect your growth as a business? As you evolve as a company, your work often starts to reflect that, and in turn, so does the way you operate. You may find yourself adding new services, features, or products once the need arises and removing others that are no longer functional and/or the best use of your time. Does your site reflect these internal changes? Keep in mind that potential clients who are looking at your site are the people who determine the state of the business you’ll be bringing in, in the near future. If your site is outdated, your new business will keep you in a place you’ve outgrown. Start thinking long-term with your business goals, and set clear expectations on your website of the work you will provide.
What’s the last time you ensured that your site's SEO was functional and up to date? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In simpler terms, SEO is how a search engine identifies your website and, based on how many details you’ve added, shows it to the people who are looking for you (or businesses like you.) Depending on who you talk to, SEO can sound like a daunting task. But small changes go a long way in creating a good foundation for your site. For the sake of today’s blog, we’ll keep it short and sweet and give you a few approachable steps you can take to get your website’s SEO on track.
According to Hubspot, two key pieces to having your website shown to people are authority and relevancy.
“Relevancy between the search query and the content on a page. Search engines assess it by various factors like topic or keywords.
Authority is measured by a website’s popularity on the Internet. Google assumes that the more popular a page or resource is, the more valuable its content is to readers.”
We’re listing a few simple tips to help you make sure your content is optimized for the best relevancy.
Keep your URLs readable and succinct. You can help the search engines by keeping the URLs to the point.
Edit your filenames to include details in the backend. A headshot of your coworker with their first and last in the filename will be much more helpful to the search engine than when it’s called something like “image14.jpg.” Keep your file names to five to six words, and use hyphens instead of spaces!
Make your site accessibility-friendly. Whether you’re building your own site or working with a developer, there are necessary steps to ensure your site is readable to everyone. Consider people using screen readers when designing your site: does it make sense to the consumer if the images are being described instead of seen? The image ALT tag or text allows you to tell a screen reader exactly what is in your image.
Do your research on keywords. Search engines use keywords to identify the most popular words people use to search for a particular topic or service. Google Keyword Planner is a great tool for this, but you can additionally start by doing your own organic research: on an incognito browser, type in one word that pertains to your business and take note of the suggestions that pop up. Another way is to search for your product or service and scroll down to “Related searches” to see what other words people associate with that search. Then, incorporate these keywords throughout your site: in headings, blogs, copy, image filenames, etc.
Recent changes we’ve made to our own site
In the last month, we updated our own portfolio with some of our more recently completed projects. Much of that work has been full-service campaigns: social media marketing, newsletter campaigns, website redesigns, etc., for our clients. We felt the examples on our website didn’t showcase the fullest capacity of what we are doing for our current clients.
Similarly, since many of our clients are on a social media retainer, we are often switching gears and adapting to the state of social media today since it is such an ever-changing landscape. When Instagram centered a lot of its spotlight within the app on reels, we changed our strategy for our social media clients to focus more on video content and updated our packages accordingly.
We hope this blog helps you get started with your website maintenance. If you want to completely redo your website, give us a buzz, and let's get a meeting on the calendar!
