5 things you can do today, to refresh your website for 2021.
Your website is your online first impression for customers, it’s the first thing they see when they interact with your business online so keeping it fresh is so important.
For 57% of users a poorly designed or dated website is the reason they wouldn’t recommend the business to a friend and 75% admit that they judge a company’s credibility based on their website.
Keeping your website fresh isn’t as hard as it can seem, with a simple guide and some tips you can keep your site looking fantastic and keeping your customers recommending you.
Here 5 of the BEST ways to hit “Refresh” on your website today!
1. New images
Images are no doubt the number 1 contributing factor to whether a website looks good. Great images on a boring website can make it look amazing and on the flip side you could have a website with all the bells and whistles, full screen sliders, fade in animations and beautiful hover effects but if it’s full of bad images it will completely ruin the aesthetic.
Refreshing your websites images is a sure way to breath new life into the design. If you have the budget, we recommend hiring a photographer to get some new shots or spending that money on professional stock photography from websites like Shutterstock or iStock. If you are looking for some free alternatives try allthefreestock.com
2. Update/ add call to actions (CTA) to each page.
Conversion optimisation basics always say that every page should always have a next step, no matter what, the home page should link through to products or services, they should link to a contact page or allow the customer to purchase, so optimising your CTA’s could really help your websites conversions.
New images and a new headline/ content go a long way with improving your call to actions.
3. Update your about us page.
As your website is your online first impression it’s also the best way to introduce yourself and your business to your customers. When someone is researching services across several businesses, they want to know who they are dealing with.
We always recommend adding photos of yourself and your team to your website to show your customers that you are people too and not some scary organisation.
Getting new profile photos every year is a great way of keeping your website up to date which is not only good for your SEO but also shows you are taking care of your website.
Don’t stop at your profile photos, write a little bit about who you are to show customers your personality as well, customers are more likely to engage with someone they know rather than a business with no face.
4. Add Videos
There is no doubt that video content is the most engaging type of content to have on your website, if your customer is to choose between reading a page of content to understand your service verse watching a short video, they will nearly always choose the video.
Updating your videos each year is important to help them feel fresh as video quality and style is constantly changing every year. As new phones and technology are released it brings new opportunities for businesses to record their own videos, the quality of smart phones in 2021 is through the roof and capable of shooting 4K videos means you don’t need to spend a fortune on a new camera or videographer.
5. Redesign
Finally, we can’t leave out a website redesign, I know this sounds like a HUGE job and to do this every year could be costly, but it’s not as big of a job as you think. If you keep your content the same and only update the design, then your website developer will have a much easier job designing something new and fresh as they can see exactly what content they need to design for.
By using the same website and just update the design all the content, images, pages, and functionality is already built ready to use, all it’s getting is a fresh coat of paint.
We recommend chatting to your design/ developer every 2nd year or so to freshen up your websites design.
So off you go! No excuses any longer. Updating your content, images and design is important and keeping up with design trends and emerging technology is too, but you don’t need to break the bank or completely rebuild your site from scratch. Updating small things here and there will increase the longevity of your website and can even improve customer conversions.
Of course, if you’d like us to give you a hand, you know we’d love to.
Yours in all things web mastery,
Jake
