If you’ve been wondering lately whether or not your website needs improving, I’ve put together a short-list of reasons you probably should invest in a new site. I’ve focused the list around marketing targets mostly because the purpose of your website is to generate leads, not to impress your friends. Let’s dive right in…
1. You’re not converting leads on your website.
Your website’s most important job is converting visitors into leads. If your website isn’t doing it’s job, you need to do the same thing you would with any other employee — fire your website and get a new one. Every single page, blog post, and entry point on your website should be focused around that one goal — getting more leads into your business.
2. You’re not blogging.
It still surprises me how many small business websites don’t have a blog. Today, web marketing lives and dies on content. If you don’t have a regularly published blog, how can you attract new visitors? How can you attract new leads? And how do you expect to even show up in Google, let alone rank highly for your target keyword phrases? You need to blog. No more excuses.
3. You’re not making it easy to find your social profiles.
You need to make it easy to see and readily apparent that you’re participating in social media by displaying social icons or some representation of your social pages. Not all visitors will want to “Like” you on Facebook or “Follow” you on Twitter, but a certain percentage will. This is a form of list building. More importantly, social media icons are an important calling card in today’s culture. You need to show that you’re “with it.”
4. You’re still following your graphic designer’s advice.
Forget what your graphic designer or web designer says about how to build a better website. Generally speaking, these folks are great at producing visually appealing work but not so great at understanding the business principles and marketing principles you need to make a sale and turn a profit. Tell them to take a hike.
5. You’re not using a Lead Magnet.
Your website should have a Lead Magnet. This is something you give away for free — an ebook, a PDF, a special report, a whitepaper, something! — that your target market will perceive as valuable. This is the fastest way to increase your conversion rate and grow your list.
6. You’re not getting any natural SEO traffic.
If your website gets literally zero natural traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, then something is definitely wrong. The structure of your website could very well be the problem. Time to revisit the drawing board.
These are some of the most common things that should trigger website changes for your business. You may not need a complete makeover to fix these issues, but at least some critical tweaks to get you on the right page.
Questions? Leave your comment below.
