Change, Its like a breath of fresh air…
Although some would disagree and say if it ‘aint broken …why fix it?
We have all been there before, when you do the same thing everyday in work it becomes second nature to us, we become complacent with the task at hand and very often lose site of the function that we are doing and how it shapes our forward progress.
We become complacent with a lot of things in our life, work & business, and that is when the damage is done.
Change
A website is for “all intents and purposes” a shop window for your business, it is the immediate message that you want to get to a client or customer in the absence of yourself being there. In today’s fast paced lifestyle, first impressions count- a customer makes an educated decision to proceed or not, within 8 seconds of landing on your website, engagement is the key, it is a reflection of your business, an out of date or old looking website will reflect on you as being “out of touch” with progress, or worse still-out of touch with your product.
'Your website is a reflection of your physical business in the virtual marketplace.' Share on X
So why is it, a website is always the last thing to be looked at-budget permitting?
If you think it will cost you too much to keep changing your website and updating it! Think how much its costing you in revenue and lost custom if you dont.
Here are some things to look at to determine whether an update/change is imminent.
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Actual Content.
Long winded text and lots of it……oh-no. Today people don’t wish to read mountains of text. keep it short, sweet and cover the points that the user wants to know. The use of Bullet points is great.
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No Blog/Social Media….Oh’o
We see it all the time, kids engrossed into social media, they are your customer of tomorrow, so get on their wave length. Bloggin’ is a great way to connect your product to your client, 92% of business’ that blog regularly every day acquire a customer thru their blog
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The BIG banner.
Its imposing and unless it gets your message over, it can take up a lot of retail space, not to mention the data it costs to download to your possible customer.
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That annoying pop-up.We’ve all seen them, that frustrating pop-up asking you to sign up as soon as you open the website, if you need one because your business relies upon subscription based clients then configure the pop up to initiate on page close, that way the message is still there but not to the detriment of your content.
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Your source code…..WHAT!!!!
If you right click on your website and “view-source” Search engine spiders see the same thing we do, words. Now take a look at the code. A Search engine friendly site should be easy to read. If your website is full of code which doesn’t mean much to you, chances are it won’t mean anything to search engine spiders either.
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Flash
What use to be the next best thing to sliced bread, is now rapidly becoming stale, thanks to the smart phones, simply put “They don’t support Flash”. It’s also not Google friendly, so a Flash based site can hurt your search engine optimization efforts.
'What use to be the next best thing to sliced bread, is now rapidly becoming stale' Share on X
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Music/Video
Its great to have all this media at your fingertips to show “Everything” off, but its always best to leave the choice of when its played, down to the viewer, its all about choice. -
Photos
A picture tells a story, just make sure it isn’t a “Stock” photo that has to tell it, don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with a stock photo but use them wisely, your customers/clients can spot them a mile away and if they feel you are trying to disillusion them about your product or service, they will soon say good bye!!
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Unresponsive…….YUK!!!
Toward the end of 2015, if your website is not responsive(adapting to different screen sizes- tablet, TV, smartphone, Desktop or laptop) you will be missing out on a hunk of business. Tablet users spend 50% more than desktop/PC users and 48% of users that view an unresponsive website as an indication of that particular business as simply not caring!
Embrace change…
It doesnt need to be a huge change, small tweaks here and there will keep your website Fresh looking and with new content going on, it will also keep those google spiders busy and help with your Search Engine Optimisation.
The Mayfield Lodge Guest House needed a Change.
if you need any help……
