Improve your website instantly with these simple tips.
A website is often the first touchpoint for many businesses to communicate with its customers. To a new customer, your website is like your face… and like the first time you meet someone face-to-face, first impressions are everything.
We’ve all been there. You’re looking for something on the web and there are pages and pages of results to sift through. Naturally you’re most likely to start at the top and work your way down the list until something catches your eye. You may be hooked in by a nice picture, catchy headline or video to watch, but you are still at the mercy of the well-trained, media savvy, no-time-to-waste viewer who is only one click away from jumping ship to the next item on the search list… your competitor.
However, there are a few basic website enhancing tips, that can immediately help to drop your website bounce rate (those people who click off straight away).
1. Speed
First and foremost, speed. It is really important that your web pages load fast, otherwise people will click away. For Google, it’s all about user experience, with speed being a ranking factor [1]. An easy way to do this, is to optimise and reduce the size of your images on your site.
2. Mobile friendly
Expanding upon user experience, your site must be mobile friendly. With a boom in smartphone technology and worldwide usage, the web is literally at our fingertips. Sites that are un-responsive on mobile appear out of scale and are hard to navigate. Google are constantly changing and updating their algorithms, with mobile friendliness a ranking factor [2]. Consider using a website builder that offers responsive themes such as WordPress.
3. Content that delivers
Simply put, if your website content is not relevant to what your visitor is looking for, then they will leave. Quality content is a top-ranking factor for Google [3]. Your web pages must contain useful information that accurately describes your topic [4]. Keep your site up-to-date with new and relevant content or try to solve a problem your customer may have.
4. The look and feel
How your website looks will depend on your branding, but it’s equally important to consider how you sound too. Gauge feedback from a range of people. It can give you valuable information on the way your business looks and sounds to the outside world.
5. Add video content (well, we would say this, wouldn’t we?)
Adding video content to your website helps to improve your SEO. Google priorities web searches with video, as it is deemed to be ‘quality content’ [5]. Not only will visitors stay on your site longer; a well-made video with quality content is a much more engaging way to deliver information, will humanise your brand and help to build trust. Believe us, this we know!
6. Keep refreshing your site
If you can, update your site on a regular basis. Notice how customers are reacting to different parts of your site, and make sure you deal with the weak points.
New look website for VPoint TV
Building upon feedback we’ve received, we’ve re-designed our website with updated content that answers some key questions that clients often ask, softened our tone of voice, improved the layout and injected some personality into the site.
We’d love to know what you think, so feel free to comment below!