In today’s digital world, having a strong online presence is essential for any brand to thrive. Think of your website as the storefront for your digital presence. Your website showcases everything you offer and works as an extension of your business – driving leads, sales, and even employees to your business. It should tell your brand’s story, acting almost as a brand ambassador for you. When you hire someone, you make sure they are set up for success with all of the resources they need to achieve their goals. You need to do the same for your website.
Making sure your website is optimized is crucial to make sure it is reaching its full potential. When you work with an agency, like Hexcode, they will work to maintain and optimize your site. They will update what needs updating, and make sure your site is running smoothly. However, sometimes working with an agency isn’t feasible for everyone. So here are some things you can do from time to time on your own to make sure your website is up to date and working to its full potential for your brand.
- Do a content audit. If you’ve let your website sit for a while without updating the content, now is a great time to review it. Your content includes images, video, and copy. The best way to do this is to go through each page of your website, starting with your home page, and make notes of what you want to change. You want to make sure you are updating your content with current keywords, copy that matches your brand’s message, and updating any media that may be outdated.
- Update your branding pieces. Once you know what pictures you want to update, have a photoshoot! This is also a great time to update the branding across your website. Maybe you’ve changed or added a color, or you’re using a different font. Take this time to make sure your brand standards are consistent across your entire site. Most importantly, don’t forget your logo! If you’ve updated or made any changes to your logo, update it on your website. Many people see your logo on social channels and other marketing materials that are updated more frequently, and you want that content to be consistent through your website too.
- Update alt text, meta titles, and descriptions. Since you’re updating photos, now is a great time to make sure all of your metadata and alt text are updated. This doesn’t have an effect on the front end of your website, and it can be a time-consuming process, but this will improve your SEO ranking and make your site more visible across the internet. You also want to make sure your metadata reflects what your company offers.
- Look at your page from an outside perspective. If you are a new visitor to your website and you don’t know what you’re looking for, are you guided to important information or do you have to hunt for it? You want to make sure all relevant information, such as how to contact you, is easy for your users to find, ensuring that their experience with your brand leaves them with a positive impression.
- Tell your brand’s story. It can be difficult to write about your own brand, but making sure your website is clear on what you do as well as the problem you solve for your customers is vital to your website’s performance. If your website visitors don’t know what you offer, they won’t go through your site and convert.
- BONUS TIP! As you update your website, let your current followers know! Announce your refresh on your social channels to reengage past customers and bring new visitors to your site.
While these are great ways to update your website on your own, there are so many other things you want to think about. How is your user experience? Does your website have some of the most recent features that are trending? Is your site optimized for loading speeds? Some of these things might be complicated for someone to do on their own if they don’t know all of the ins and outs of how to utilize all of these functions. If you need help updating your site, or if you just want a brand new site, Hexcode Marketing can help! We have a dedicated web designer, and web developer to ensure you get a website that is the perfect digital storefront for your brand!