The 4 Things to Focus on for Your Website

So you just launched your new website. Great! Now what? You may think you’re done. You’d be wrong.

There are four things you should regularly focus on (or have someone do it for you) for your website in order to keep it happy and healthy — making sure it accurately and effectively represents you and your brand online.

Those four things are:

  1. Speed & Security
  2. Usability & Accessibility
  3. Traffic
  4. Conversion

Speed & Security

If you don’t already know, having a slow loading website hurts your conversion rate, and in fact, Google has started penalizing those sites that are slow to load by lowering their search ranking. Getting your site to load fast isn’t that hard to do, and made easier if you’re using a tool like WordPress with a caching plugin installed.

Having a fast website won’t help if that fast loading website has been hacked. You may not even realize that your site is hacked (e.g. hidden links to malware sites, or worse — porn sites) that load in the background. Get your site secured by first using a good, reliable website host, and then install a reputable WordPress security plugin like iThemes security. It will protect your site and tell you of any threats.

Usability & Accessibility

Having a reliable website host makes all the difference, especially when your business starts to get noticed and you get more and more traffic. If your site goes belly up because of high traffic volume or due to a hack, if you’re not quick to recover then you may never recover. Your visitors simply won’t come back. Your website needs to be accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, no matter how popular it is and how many people are hitting it at the same time.

The same goes for the website’s actual usability. So your website is accessible (I can get to it), and it loads fast on my iPad and doesn’t redirect me (speed and security), great! But if I can’t navigate it easily using my chosen device (i.e. only designed for desktop and looks bad on phones), then you’re at a loss again. Your website’s usability should be a top priority when you have it designed. Think about your target audience and how they will want to view your site. Design for them, not you.

Traffic

So your website is secure, loads fast, and works on all devices. Now we just need to get people to visit it. Hopefully, when you first designed your site you had a certain visitor (i.e. target market) in mind. Go to where those people are already at (e.g. Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn) online and set up targeted ads that link back to your website. Get in front of your desired audience offline, too, by speaking at local events in your area. Become an authority in your field and give free resources available only on your website. In short order, your website will get the traffic you wish.

Conversion

Once you have traffic to your website, you’ll want to get those people to buy your product, contact you for a consultation, register for your event, in other words, convert from a prospect to a lead/customer. Every page on your website should be designed with a specific flow in mind and have a specific call-to-action in place. Don’t make web pages overly complex that could confuse the visitor. Once your visitor downloads or requests your free resource, follow up with them with a targeted, customized email sequence that guides them to the logical next step in your sales cycle. Tailor your message based on the behavior of your visitors by not showing the same calls to action to everyone. You can test parts of or whole pages of your website by installing A/B testing plugins that test which text or imagery works best.

Ongoing Website Strategy

SIX15 provides ongoing website Insurance, Management, and Strategy plans on a monthly subscription basis. There are no long terms commitments, and each plan is geared toward your specific needs. I handle the above-described points as well as so much more. I’d love to chat with you to discuss your website management needs.

Scroll to Top