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Winter has a way of making people put their heads down to get through the short, cold days to get to Spring. As the days get longer and the sun shines brighter, it gets a little easier to check in and assess the current state of your website.
How is the traffic? How are conversions? Is everything working? Whatever your situation, here are five things you can do to help answer those questions and position yourself for the future.
1. Check your forms to make sure they’re working.
It can happen without you realizing, but your contact forms can suddenly stop delivering. Electronic mail delivery is always in flux with anti-spam measures, server changes, and different delivery protocols. What works today, may not work tomorrow. We recommend running contact form tests once a month just to ensure there isn’t a problem with receiving your emails.
Contact form submissions are the desired result of most service-based businesses, so do a check in to make sure you are hearing from people who want to contact you.
2. Check the date on your website.
It’s fairly common to put the year and copyright in the footer of your website. It’s also fairly common to forget about it and leave it alone as time passes. The problem here is that an old date is a subtle sign to users that your website isn’t up to date (even if that’s not really the case).
So, when you go to your website, just do a quick check to make sure it displays the current year. Bonus points if you can make the year on your website change automatically from year to year so you don’t have to worry about it anymore (hint: we know how to do this).
3. Make it easy to contact you.
When a user first gets to the website, is it easy for them to find your phone number? Address? Contact Form? Social Channels? Whatever the desired action is, you should make it as easy as possible for the user to do it.
It’s also a good time to revisit what a successful interaction with your website looks like. Is it spending time on your site? Reaching out and making contact? Buying something? Be clear on your goals and make it easy for the user to accomplish them.
4. Update your social channels.
This one has two meanings. First, take a look at your website and make sure your relevant social channels are linked correctly. The social landscape changes quickly and many of the networks from last year could have changed, shuttered, or not seen much recent activity.
Second, update the social channels you’re using (meaning, if you choose to display them on your website, you should try to interact on the channels to show activity). It’s great that you have a Youtube channel, but if you’re last video was from 2015, does it really deserve a badge on your website? Use them or lose them.
5. Post a blog
Do you have a blog section? Do you update it regularly? Did you know it’s one of the best forms of self promotion you can do on the internet?
If you answered no to any of these questions, this is the action for you. Just stop reading and go write a blog post (or get in touch about how to make it happen). Blogging has so many benefits (expands your keywords, shows you update your site regularly, positions you as an expert, I can’t list them all because there are too many, etc), that it’s time to make it a part of your routine.
So, that’s a pretty easy list, right? All told, you could probably accomplish most of this in less than an hour and have a fresh presentation for Spring. As always, if you have questions about anything, please reach out. We are here to help and encourage success wherever we can.