Your website plays a crucial role in helping inform and attract potential customers. Research shows though that when a visitor heads to a site, they will judge the page initially through a 2 second glance, and then it has between 15-45 seconds to keep their interest.

If a site takes longer than 1-2 seconds to load, chances are the visitor will leave and focus on the next company in their search results list.

Now’s a good time then to get your website working better for you, so here’s our simple guide help your website perform well in 2023.

Plan it!

First of all, it really helps to create a plan for what you want your website to deliver and how it’ll realistically achieve that.

To begin with take stock of how it performed last year, and its current results for visitor traffic and engagement.  For example:

• Look at your analytics and take a snapshot of traffic now. This will help you monitor progress throughout the year.
• If you’re not sure what to track, we recommend looking at page views, user volumes (new and recurring), average time on pages, bounce rates and traffic source. For more ideas check out this top 10 of other metrics.
• Look at your most popular and least popular pages to determine what’s resonating with people and what’s not. How does that compare to what you’d like your popular pages to be?

Having taken your snapshot, set goals for what you want to achieve – this will allow you to track improvements over the year.

Also, if you haven’t already got set up for Google’s new analytics approach (GA4), now is the time to do so. This will avoid you losing vital historical data when Google’s Universal is phased out by Google Analytics later this year. Here is Google’s set-up guide to help you get going, or ask your IT provider to help you.

7 ways to spring clean your site

With your goals in place, you now need to think of the activities you’ll undertake to achieve them. Here are some basic to-dos to give your website a spring clean and improve its performance.

1. Update its copyright year to show it’s current.
2. Check its site speed here using Google’s page checker tool
3. Check for broken links – there are paid for and free versions provided to help check this. For a free tool you can use Google Search Console, if you don’t have an account already you can sign up here. Click the site you want to monitor, and bear in mind it can take up to a week for Google to ‘crawl’ the site and provide feedback on all the broken links.
4. Test your contact form and any other sign-up mechanisms (such as to your newsletter) are still working and going through to the correct systems/people. Software updates often cause hiccups in forms, or you may have people away or the dedicated person has now left the business.
5. Check your About Us page – for example is the information still current, and are basics like contact numbers and addresses correct?
6. Refresh your reviews/testimonials – if these are old, add some of the newer feedback you’ve received.
7. Check your site is mobile-friendly – people researching and using websites via their phones is increasing year on year. Having a site that doesn’t look right on a mobile will put people off your business.

With these foundations in place consider the following ways to achieve the goals you’ve set for your site.

7 ways to attract and retain visitor interest on your site

1  Make more of your most popular pages

For starters, create more content around that theme. Also think about what else is signposted on that page to draw visitors deeper into the site and encourage them to explore other content.  This will help reduce your site’s bounce rate levels.  You can also create features on popular pages to highlight content to sign-up for (like a guide, offer etc) or encourage them to get in touch (chat box).

2  Get seasonal

Making more of the season on your site will appeal to human interest in both B2C and B2B environments. It also signposts that your site is current and relevant. Could you make certain pages seem current and fresh by adding seasonally-related content and images?

3  Commit to making more of stories, images and videos this year

These are the elements that resonate more with visitors and hold their interest for longer.

4  Refresh your search phrases and keywords

Don’t forget to review and refresh the key search phrases your customers are searching for on both Google and your website search bar? You can analyse what people are searching on using this free tool.

5  Commit to creating and posting more quality content

Following the Helpful Content Update by Google last year (and if you haven’t already), review the content on your site. The Helpful Content update aimed to ensure unhelpful, untrustworthy content wasn’t so easily found in SEO searches.  So how does your site fare?  Does it provide valuable helpful information to those reading it?

6  Tackle your least popular pages

If your least popular pages are still relevant for your business, give them a makeover and work on their SEO to improve their performance. We like using the Yoast plug-in which has a traffic light system to help improve pages SEO performance.

7  List your 2023 hot topics

Consider what will be hot issues for your customers and prospective visitors this year. For those relevant to your business offering and how you help, plan a calendar of content which ties into current mood and interests. Look for pointers in your business, for example in frequently asked questions being fielded by your sales and customer service teams, what’s happening in customers’ industry sectors etc.

Summary and can we help?

Working on these simple steps, and monitoring improvements along the way, will allow you make your website more current and appealing in 2023.

If you would like to improve the enquiries and engagement you are generating from your website or would like to discuss a review of its user experience, please do contact us for an initial chat.