Earlier this week on the Smaller Business Podcast, I spoke about a process we go through for new clients that walks us and them through a better website. It’s some work, don’t get me wrong, but it’s also highly achievable once you sit down and follow the steps.
I talked in more detail about it on the show, but the gist to the 5 Steps to a Better Website:
- Read everything on your site and remove all mentions of “coming soon”, “under construction”, and all outdated material.
- Rewrite everything on your site to include specific figures and eliminate the tone of “we” and “we’re”. Instead use “you” and “you’re” and, for example, “98% of our customers would refer us to a friend” instead of “customers love us”.
- Review your website analytics. Write down how many people you currently see per month and what your most popular content is. Use this information to create more of that kind of content or focus on that niche.
- Identify what your primary customers — the people most likely to need and want to see your site — should do when they get there. This is called the Call to Action. Make that front and center on the homepage and add it to every other page on the site in a sidebar or footer.
- Establish an editorial calendar that helps you place new content on your site every week and stick to it.
