Keep your site looking relevant!

Imagine you opened a bricks and mortar shop five years ago with an eye-catching window display to inspire retailers. It was original and stood out from the crowd in a busy street. Fast forward to the present day, and you still have precisely the same display. It’s now looking tired and dated, and passers-by barely give it a second look. This is exactly what it’s like with websites. You cannot afford to adopt a create-it-then-forget-about-it approach to your site. The look and feel of a website can make or break a business’ reputation so the stakes are high. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution, and that is to refresh your site regularly, which can be done with little or no cost at all!

Those all-important areas

So, how can you keep your website looking consistently fresh and relevant? Among the minor, and more significant, changes you can make are:

• Renewing your images
• Sprucing up your content
• Keeping your company information up to date
• Perhaps refreshing your logo if it’s been a while and needs modernising to appeal to your current target market. We would follow this up with a revision of your website colour scheme to match, giving it a new look and feel
• Or it could be time for a completely new website — either upgrading to a new template design or exploring the bespoke options available

Let’s look in a little more detail at some of the key changes you can make.

Renew Images

Just like the eyes are the window to the soul, so website images are the window into your brand’s identity. Most of the information we perceive is visual, and your images should trigger positive emotions and draw people in. Outdated pictures give the impression of an outdated company. New photos of your business, or local area, or vibrant new stock shots can mean all the difference between a website that really shows off your business and one that doesn’t. You can provide your own images (as long as you own the copyright), or we can source them for you, with as much or as little input from you as you’d like.

You can further enhance your main images with a catchy strapline or use a slideshow to add movement, keeping people on your site for longer and directing them to the services you most want to promote.

Spruce Up Your Written Content

When did you last take a long hard look at your written content? Carve out some time to review all your pages and look for opportunities to change the language to better reflect what you’re about. Better still, regularly add some fresh content to your site by way of a blog. Not only does this keep things interesting for your audience and promote your expertise in your industry, but you can experience a boost in search engine rankings. Google loves new content!

Update Essential Information

If you have a financial or mortgage template website with us, we maintain all of the product content, ensuring it is constantly kept up to date and compliant. However, there are other areas which you should be looking at regularly.

Review your company information such as your contact details, about us page and introductions to team members, and ensure it is up to date. For example, if your about us page was written in 2016, the number of years you’ve been in business will need to change. This may seem a minor, inconsequential modification, but not attending to details like this can come across as sloppy. And that’s not a reputation you want.

Things you should think about are:

• Your welcome text — is it a true reflection of your business and your brand
• Team images and their profiles — don’t forget this is one of the first pages a potential client will visit. Are your images the best they can be? Are everyone’s qualifications, achievements and interests up to date?
• Testimonials — show that your clients are consistently saying good things about you by adding these regularly
• Promotional areas — are you promoting the services you want to promote and in the right way? Is there anything happening within your business that you want to highlight to clients and potential clients?
• Articles/blogs — adding some opinion pieces that are specific to your view on current events which might impact your clients and potential clients not only differentiates you from the competition, it also gives Google that all important fresh content. A blogger might even pick up on it and promote you too!

Remember, changes to your website content are included as part of your monthly licence fee, so there is no extra charge to spruce up any of your existing content, just send it in and we’ll take care of it!

Give Your Website a Complete Overhaul

We recommend you upgrade or redesign your website every few years to ensure it is in keeping with the latest design trends and advances in technology. Things are constantly changing and developing in these areas and we bring out a new template range every two years for this very reason.

It just so happens we have a new range of website templates launching in early 2020, so keep an eye out for that announcement!

PS: The last thing you want is for clients and potential clients to think your website looks stale. Therefore, we recommend you review and refresh it every three months. And what better time to think about this than at the beginning of the year when you’re setting your goals for 2020.