5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Website

Your website may be your business’ storefront on the internet, but unlike your brick and mortar location, there’s no front door. What I mean by this is that you should expect visitors to land on any page of your website at any time. You may be wondering why that should matter to you. Because visitors can land on any page of your website at any time, it’s important that you ensure each page has elements that will lead the visitor to act. Here are 5 simple ways to improve your website:

1. Optimize content for mobile devices. If every page of your website isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re selling yourself short. At the end of 2016, there were 7.22 billion active mobile devices in the world – that’s almost 1 device per person in the world. These mobile devices are used to visit your website, but if it isn’t properly optimized for mobile, it will appear messy and unprofessional. Make sure you’re catering to people who will visit your website from different devices – it’s an important step that can greatly approve how user friendly your website is.
2. Make your navigation as intuitive as possible. Simple, streamlined navigation that’s accessible from every page is necessary if you want to improve your website and ensure it is as user friendly as possible.
3. Put a call to action on every page. What do you want visitors to do after they read a page on your website? Perhaps you would like them to view additional samples of your work, or contact you for a free consultation. Whatever it is that you want visitors to do, there should be a call to action that encourages them to take that step. Make it stand out from the rest of the page by giving it a color background, or making the text larger.
4. Make sure your contact forms work properly. Having a contact form is a great way to improve your website. Sometimes visitors prefer to reach out to businesses this way because they don’t have the time to call or stop by the storefront. Make sure your contact forms are connected to an email account that you check often. You shouldn’t let inquiries go answered for more than 24-48 hours. Remember that those who use this form to reach you are potential customers.
5. Help the visitor convert. This point is truly a summation of the above steps. Every change you make to the design of your page should have one purpose – help the visitor convert. Your website shouldn’t function only as a source of information, it should truly be a sales tool that helps your business thrive.

After following these steps, the simplest way to see if they were effective is to monitor Google Analytics. Examine your bounce rate, the amount of time visitors spend on your website, and other applicable information. Compare a few months with the changes, to a few months in the previous year and see how they compare. Sometimes small changes can make a difference. Try it out and see for yourself!