A great website is a vital part of any online marketing strategy. After all your website is your modern-day storefront/brochure/golden pages listing, etc and in many cases, the website is the first impression potential customers will have of your business.
Whether you are providing a product or service, are a small business, start-up, or growing company, working in a small niche market or selling to a wide variety of target customers, your website should be functioning as the crown jewel in your marketing and sales strategy to attract potential clients and win their business.
In general, a good website design should last you about 2-4 years, after that, you are probably not using the latest technology and design trends to your advantage. It doesn’t mean you have to scrap everything you have, but it does mean you should do some objective evaluating
Here are the main points you need to consider
- Design – having a website that looks dated could mean potential customers will associate your business as out of touch
- Security – How often do you hear of major companies having their systems hacked? Websites are the same, do you want to deal with the pain, embarrassment and clean-up costs of dealing with a hacked website? Is your site loading over HTTPS to ensure your customer’s data is being encrypted?
- Evolve – Your business is not the same as it was 2 years ago so why should your website be – websites should evolve and adapt to best represent your current business
- Expand – There may be scope to add new functions and features to your website to help your business. We have often seen where a small and simple feature added to a website can have a big impact on how it performs for the business. Think of repetitive tasks that the website could automate and save your business time and money on.
- Performance – Can your potential customers find your site? Is your current website getting you the maximum sale lead conversion?
- Broken – Websites and the software running them can break or become redundant over long periods of time. When was the last time you had your site’s contact forms checked? Had a broken link checker test been done?
- Compatibility – Is your site mobile compatible and even if it is how well does it load in the latest web browsers?
- Competitors – Your main competitors have all launched new, bigger and better-functioning websites, so how is your current site stacking up?
- Change – Your business has changed and you have new products or services to promote or you wish to change your content strategy
- Speed – How quickly your site loads is now a very important factor in how successful it will be and newer technology allows us to greatly improve page load times
If any of the above strikes a chord with you get in touch with iSeek.ie and we can review and advise.