Owning a business can be overwhelming and time consuming. It's easy to get caught up in day-to-day tasks and let ourselves go. As months go by, we forget to take care of the obvious, our core. What’s the core of your business? Your website. No other facet of your business works as hard as your company website. It’s the spokesperson, lead generator and community engager of your business. Here are a few healthy ways to get your website back into shape for summer.
Take time to assess and remove any unnecessary elements on your homepage that may be causing information overload. You only have 4 seconds to get a visitor to take an action. By simplifying your homepage design and keeping your message clear, your visitor will quickly understand what you do, how you can help them and where they should click next. Remember to keep "white space" in your design and add color, typography and images sparingly.
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Running through your website page by page sounds like a lot of work. But it can actually be beneficial to not only improve how your site looks, but it can also help its performance. Start simple; work your way through your main navigation pages first. Once you are happy with the way those look, start into the second level navigation, and so on.
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Keeping an updated blog feed on your site can easily increase traffic and engagement. You will also get the opposite effect by not updating your blog; nobody wants to engage with a company that hasn't had any news to report since last July. Posting once a week is considered the bare minimum, but it’s still better than once a month. Your visitors will definitely take notice, so make sure a blog feed is one of your must-have homepage design elements and remember to blog regularly.
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It's time to replace those old images of text you once used on your site. It used to be difficult to get that branded feeling you were looking for due to the limited availability of web fonts, but thanks to a multitude of font replacement services, the sky is the limit now. You can still get that custom look while keeping all of your copy completely editable. Services such as Google Fonts, Typekit and fonts.com are just a few to try.
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Now that your site is looking good, make sure it can be found and seen by all. It may be hard to hear, but it’s time to ditch those flash intros, banners and CTAs. Flash is not SEO friendly; with such high demands for properly optimized sites, businesses can't afford to have a site that only registers as images with very little or no SEO. They can also be expensive and a hassle to update if you are without a Flash developer.
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Start with these basic concepts and start reaping the benefits of a healthier, more agile website design by summer. Do you have more tips for a "healthy" website? Share them with us by commenting below.
Photo credit: kharied
