Getting your website up and running is no mean feat. Unfortunately, the hard work doesn’t end there. Keeping your website user-friendly and up-to-date is a constant battle. That’s why we’ve compiled a few tips on website maintenance.
Refresh your online content
As your business grows, you’ll need to edit or add pages to your website. This might mean updating staff pages, or adding new products and services. You may also be aware of the benefits of blogging, and want to keep your blog updated with regular posts.
When doing this, you’ll need to be careful your site doesn’t become messy. New copy still needs to reflect your business personality, and new pages need to be added to the right sections (in the right order!).
To keep on top of this, it is a good idea to draft a simple content management strategy. This should outline:
- how often the content on your website should be reviewed
- who will update pages when you need to add or edit content, and
- who is going to check content is on brand, web accessible and uploaded correctly.
This might sound like a lot of maintenance, but in reality, it’s just a great way of making sure all your hard work doesn’t go to waste.
Review your website’s performance
To ensure you’re getting the most from your website, you’ll want to review your site regularly to see if it is performing as expected. Are you getting enough visitors? How long are they staying on your site? How often do they return? How many are converted into sales?
To answer these questions, you might want to try Google Analytics. The data gathered will tell you how visitors found your site, so you will be able to fine-tune your promotional activities. It will also tell you what are the most popular pages on your website, so you can get a better sense of what visitors want.
Experiment with your content
Make sure your website evolves as your business does. One way to do this is to try running ongoing testing, such as A/B split testing—a great way to gain insight into visitor behaviour.
Simply put, A/B split testing is when you compare two different versions of the same webpage by diverting half your visitors to one version, and the other half to the other version. Then, using data from a program like Google Analytics, you can tell which version was able to convert more sales and fine-tune your site accordingly.
Companies have found success by making bold but simple changes, such as moving images to different positions on the page, or changing the design of their ‘buy now’ button.
If you’d like to update your content but still don’t know where to start, get the team at Shuttle Rocket on the case. We offer one, three and five page face-lifts, as well as blog post packages to totally refresh your website.