How long has it been since you updated or refreshed the design, content and user experience of your website? For many of you, the answer will be some version of “too long.”
The website is the front door to your company. If your site isn’t making a good first impression, visitors will likely leave and go to your competitor’s site. That’s why it’s a good idea to evaluate your website at least on a quarterly basis or more often if possible and look for opportunities to optimize the user experience, content and design. You can start the process by taking a hard look at your site analytics and search results to see if you uncover any trends.
What’s your inbound web traffic look like? Is it growing, stagnant or even declining? Approximately 70 percent of search engine results are organic. These organic searches tie directly back to your site, your blog and your web presence. If your web and social media presence are lacking, your business is lacking visibility. And if you are lacking visibility, you are more than likely losing sales – and you may not even know it.
Is your website driving engagement, thought leadership and leads? A recent study indicates that before B2B buyers ever talk to a sales rep, they are already 57 percent of the way to a buying decision based on the information they learn from web searches, peers, online forums or social media.
Content is critical. If your web content is outdated, boring or stale, your website probably isn’t doing a good job of providing prospects with the information they need. With prospects spending more and more time researching solutions by themselves, companies must be sure that their web content and blogs speak to their buyers’ business pains and address the industry trends and topics that will get them to consider your company’s products and services.
To determine if your website could use an update or remodeling, ask yourself these 12 questions:
1. Does the site’s design and user experience look and feel old and a bit tired?
2. Is it hard for prospects and other visitors to navigate your website and find the information they’re looking for?
3. Has your website not kept pace with your company’s new products, services, messaging and growth?
4. Does your website reflect the current state of your brand or company identity?
5. Does your website provide a less-than-optimal user experience for the growing number of visitors who will access your site through their smartphones or tablet PCs?
6. Are updates to your site time-consuming and costly?
7. Is your content management system outdated and hard to use?
8. Has your website been “patched” so many times that it looks like multiple sites, but it’s not?
9. Have your SEO initiatives not delivered the results you expected?
10. Has your bounce rate spiked in recent months?
11. Is your content outdated and/or static? Does your website lack a steady stream of fresh content targeted to your buyers’ needs and in the formats they prefer (text, video, blog posts, white papers and eBooks)?
12. Does your company fail to participate in social media – or not very active in using social media channels to communicate with key audiences? (Here are 6 Reasons Why Your Organization Should Embrace Social Media)
If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions, your website could be a good candidate for a next generation redesign and optimization. With the right design and user experience, navigation, site structure and content, your optimized website can help you deliver better results from your marketing and sales campaigns.
What other questions would you add to the above checklist? How long has it been since you updated your site and why? Please share your thoughts with your colleagues in the comments below.
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