Supercharge Your Business With These 4 Web Development Tips - SmartSites
When companies set up new websites, they tend to have very high expectations about their ability to connect with potential customers online. With more business transactions moving online, there is some basis in these high expectations. Unfortunately, reality does not always match these expectations. New websites do not start attracting thousands of visitors from the get-go and they do not start ranking high on Google search results.
Although this may feel like a letdown, there are several things that you can give your business a major boost by tweaking your website. Here are four things that you can do to supercharge your business.
Although Google will eventually index your site, the problem is that it takes a long time for this to happen, even though this is a fully automated process. This is because of the sheer number of websites that Google needs to index in order to get to your website. The way around this problem is to connect your website to the Google Search Console and thus gain access to their URL inspection tool. This allows you to speed up the indexing process.
From the menu on the left, click on the URL inspection menu and input your URL. It will then notify you if the URL is in Google or not i.e if it is indexed. In case you get a notice that it is not on Google, then the solution is to choose the option that says ‘request indexing’ and the issue will be sorted out. The key thing to remember is that you need to index your website on other search engines other than Google. There is Microsoft’s Bing which also controls Yahoo! search. If you are not sure how to index your site on other search engines, there are numerous web resources that can be of help. The trick here is to focus on the key search engines that your customers are likely to use.
When it comes to attracting and keeping visitors on your site, nothing is as important as user experience. Many companies shoot themselves in the foot by trying to load too much on the website and thus make their sites unappealing to clients. Whenever you are developing your website, you should constantly ask yourself if this site would appeal to you if you were an ordinary visitor browsing the website.
Common mistakes that companies make include loading too much text, uploading heavy images, too many menus, and a lack of logical progression when navigating from one page to another. Heavy images for example slow down the website and frustrated clients are likely to exit your site and head to that of your competitor. When designing your website, ensure that you test it extensively to ensure that it offers the best user experience possible. Where possible, get focus groups of your target demographics to try out your website and offer you feedback about their experience. You should also ensure that your website is optimized for mobile devices as these are increasingly the devices of choice for many web browsers.
Draw More Visitors
If you are looking to draw more visitors to your site, there are a number of things that you can do that will help.
Social Media- Social media platforms are powerful tools that can help you get visitors to your site in ever-increasing numbers. The first thing to do is to identify the social media platforms that are popular with your target customers. Depending on their age and other demographic profiles, you can zero in on particular social media platforms that you will focus on. This is because doing a few social media platforms well is more effective than trying to get all of them right. Ensure that you generate unique posts for each social media platform rather than copy-paste the same material across all the platforms. Another oft-overlooked strategy when it comes to social media is to respond to client messages and thus generate conversations. Talking to clients not only helps you glean critical feedback but also humanizes your brand in the minds of your potential customers.
Improve organic Searches – This is done through a number of ways such as ensuring that your website has up-to-date content that is concise and relevant. You also need to ensure that the website has no technical errors. One of the best ways to do this is to engage experts to run a SEO analysis on your site in order to weed out any such problems. An SEO analysis will also help identify problems with your content and give you a sense of direction regarding what needs to be done to improve it. Looking at competitor sites and more so focusing on the keywords that they are using will help optimize your website even further.
All the strategies that we have talked about so far have been aimed at drawing and retaining visitors to your website. However, the ultimate goal of all websites is conversions which can be defined in many different ways depending on the goal of the business. For some businesses that run e-commerce sites, conversions mean sales while for others, it could be to get customers to subscribe to get more information. Regardless of the goal of the website, it is important for any business to optimize their website to ensure that it converts as many visitors as possible. This means clear conversion messages in critical pages such as landing pages and so on. It also means ensuring that you remove any barriers to conversions (such as a complicated check-out system). With clear planning and strategic action, any business can boost sales by ensuring that its website is as optimized as possible. Even if the website is new, these strategies will increase web traffic, conversions, and much more at a faster rate than would be ordinarily possible without any intervention.
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