THIS WEEK ON THE MORNING MARK:
What to Ask For in Your Next Website Refresh
It’s inevitable. You simply have to refresh your business website at least yearly. Otherwise, it can become hopelessly out-of-date. If you don’t have this capability on staff, here are four musts for any refresh you contract out.
STEP ONE
Sync Up.
Look at your social media, emails, ads, and any print materials for new messaging and style directions for your brand. These other forms of communication change much faster than your website. Since you want to provide a seamless experience to your target audience, it is imperative to realign all communication forms occasionally.
STEP TWO
Ask for a Website Style Guide.
A website gains the professional look you desire when it follows website design best practices. This can be hard when different people work on it either occasionally or regularly. For example, your brand font and colors should be used consistently throughout. Your buttons are always a certain shape and size. Your icons always have a particular style. These decisions and more should be spelled out in your Style Guide for anyone who needs them.
STEP THREE
Ask for basic SEO.
This almost never happens unless you ask for it specifically. It’s considered a separate function (and charge) from web design. However, your designer is the person who will carry out this task if you decide to do it, so you might as well take care of it during your web refresh.
For example:
– Optimize your webpage titles, URLs and descriptions so the search engine can navigate to your pages.
– Work on page speed so your website doesn’t take too long to load.
– Drop in the snippet code to connect you with Google Analytics so you can see what visitors are doing on your website. If you have Facebook, drop in the pixel code. If you don’t use these yet, you soon will.
STEP FOUR
Ask for basic website training.
Your website needs are evolving all the time. Ask for “basic” training in updating words and images for your site so you can make changes when needed. This will let you correct mistakes, reference time-sensitive events like promos, seasons, etc., and keep your website from becoming so outdated between refreshes. It will also save you time and money by eliminating the need to send numerous quick updates to a designer.
Takeaway
You’re most likely driving your target audience to your website from other digital platforms in hopes of making sales. Make sure your website is always at its best to receive these visitors when they arrive.
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