In 2018, your small business’ website can be just as, if not more important than your business’ store front. In fact, for a lot of businesses, your online home and social media pages have replaced the business storefront.
While improving your presence online and SEO attractiveness can take a long time to cultivate, there’s no shortage of quick and easy improvements that can make your business far more attractive and clickable for customers all over the world. Before you decide to hire a web developer, consider if you can make changes on your own.
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Update Your Look by Buying a Template
Source: Serendipity Int
If your online business out of date, the best and fastest way to bring it back to the modern world is by buying an online template.
It is important to keep in mind that you will want to make sure that your template does not get in the way in potential customers seeing the real you. Don’t purchase a template that might be used by hundreds of other companies out there. Also, if you’ve already taken the time to create a customizable website, don’t worry about this step.
If you are wondering where you can look for modern templates that will draw in a potential customer, considering looking at examples such as WordPress, Squarespace, ThemeForest, and TemplateMonster.
Add Some Plugins
Source: onaircode.com
Whether you’re using a WordPress template or some other content system, chance are you can utilize some nice plugins to improve your online home. Here are list of useful plugins to consider.
- WordPress SEO by Yoast: One of the most popular and powerful ways that you can optimize your HTML elements is by using this plugin to be certain that content is being properly optimized.
- Social Bar: If you are looking to improve your followers on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and more, considering inserting a floating social bar to get visitors to visit your other online pages.
- OptinMonster: Build email captures to find out what aspects of your site do the best job of turning visitors into customers.
- AMP: Keep in mind that your online presence extends to mobile use in a huge way. Over half of internet time is now done on smart phones and using AMP on your WordPress will make sure that your mobile visitors are getting the most out of visiting your page on their mobile phones.
- Disqus: If your site doubles as a personal or professional blog, considering using Disqus as a comment management system so that you can improve your reader engagement.
Use a Heat Map to literally see what parts of your page are gaining most traction
source: business2community.com
Where are people looking when they’re on your page? Where are people clicking? This could really help you figure out what parts of your page are attracting the most visitors. A program like Crazy Egg will allow you to figure out how to get a better hold on how customers are interacting with what they are seeing on the screen.
Add a visual element
Source: Ryan Robinson
If you are selling yourself as a creative thinker, professional consultant, or as really anything that requires personality and people skills, consider getting professional headshots and putting one on your site.
If you sell furniture, make sure images are present on more places than just your available inventory.
Adding something simple and visual helps potential customers see evidence of what you are selling, On top of that, most humans are visual learners and feel far more in the know when they can look at something as opposed to just reading about it.
Adding visual cues will let it really pop and will help break up the About Us page, contact information, and more.
This is a rather small change, but it can make a huge difference when it comes to drawing the reader in.
De-clutter your page
Source: Snap Agency
Most of the tips so far have been about what to add when it comes to your business’ page. Still, addition by subtraction is a very real thing and making sure your website is clean, concise, and de-cluttered is paramount to brining in savvy customers.
On top of making your site look great, de-cluttering it is also about speed. According to expert metrics, visitors expect pages to load in under two seconds. If your online marketplace or blog has too many complex elements, your potential customers could decide to click out of your page before it even loads. Visit here for more information.
Ask What Can Be Improved
Source: Crazy Egg
If you’re spending everyday on your business’ site, it might be very hard for you to actually see what could use a little tune up. Consider asking family and friends for their honest opinion. See what they like, and see what they think could be improved.
Better yet, ask your customers. You can directly ask visitor and customers to offer you ways you can improve their online experience. While you might not get the answers you were looking for, they can be incredibly helpful when it comes to making your site as user friendly as possible.
