How long has it been since you first launched your company’s website? From an inbound marketing perspective, it’s of paramount importance that your website remains up to date and is developed by a web designer who follows the latest industry best practices.
Your website showcases your company’s unique value proposition, or what differentiates you from the competition. This means you must evaluate every aspect of the site to make sure it is meeting your goals to inform customers about your offerings, let them easily place orders and then give feedback with endorsements or positive reviews.
Landing Page Experiments
Don’t be content to rest on your current level of success. There is always room for improvement in your website. This is not to say that you should make changes lightly. However, one component of your website that merits frequent testing is the landing page. This is different from the home page. A landing page’s purpose is to increase conversions.
It’s best to conduct split A/B testing to see how different versions of the landing page attract customers. You can put up two versions of the landing page simultaneously, and then use organic search, social media promotions and other marketing channels to encourage some people to visit version A of the page and others to click on the link for version B.
Mobile Users
With more people than ever relying on their mobile devices to go online and find companies, you must make sure that your website is optimized for smartphone users. This means developing it according to the principles of responsive design, so that your pages will look great on any sized screen, from PCs to small phones.
Search engines give priority in search results to mobile websites that load quickly and require little bandwidth. Remember that some customers have smartphone plans that charge them according to how much they download over cellular data networks. Use small image files and keep bloated code off of the site for speedier loading on mobile devices.
Otherwise, visitors will likely bounce from your site to check out competitors who have websites that are easier to load and navigate.
Include filters on the products and services pages so mobile visitors can quickly fine-tune what items are displayed, speeding up the process of selection and increasing the likelihood of sales. A difficult-to-use shopping cart can also drive people from the site, so test yours thoroughly on a variety of different mobile devices.
Getting Sociable
You’ll want to include links to all your company’s social media channels on every page of the website. The sight of each LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter icon will stimulate visitors to click and follow you.
This accomplishes multiple inbound marketing tasks: You are getting people to engage with you on social media, meaning you can now offer incentives to bring them down the sales funnel. What’s more, even if your company’s website goes down temporarily, customers can still find you via your Facebook page or Twitter feed. You also have the benefit of customers serving as brand ambassadors for your company when they praise you via social channels.
For more engagement, you should put up blog posts on a regular basis as well. This entices people to visit your site more often and learn more about new products and services, as well as sales and other promotions. At the same time, each new blog post, designed with appropriate keywords to bring in more organic traffic, will keep your website looking fresh from the perspective of search engines, further improving your rank.
Failure to update your website for SEO, responsiveness and ease of navigation could lead to fewer people finding your company and sharing it with their friends, especially when it comes to mobile users. Your inbound marketing team will be able to do its job much better and give you the highest return on your marketing investment when you take all necessary steps to improve and test the site.
