Website Tips – Keeping Your Business Relevant

Updating your website is equally as important as updating your social media on a regular basis, so here are some essential website tips for  keeping your business relevant. Okay so here it is: you’ve finally ignited your digital presence. You’ve created and designed a beautiful website highlighting the main aspects of your business. Great, now you’re sorted, no need to touch the site again? Wrong! Working with our clients in months gone by, one main aspect has stood out following the initial consultations – all the “current” websites have become stagnant and out of date, with out-of-date content boasting 1990’s designs. We see this as a sign of neglect and more importantly, your customers see it as a sign of poor management and may begin to question whether the business is still in operation. Believe it or not, the Irish public have become extremely tech savvy, and don’t think for a second that your website is not a reflection on your business. Having updated the internal decor of your pub or restaurant, you’ve let your site fall by the wayside. Your website is a marketing tool – if customers see your site is old and the contents has not been updated since 2013, what was the point updating your business for nobody to see? Not to worry. We’ve created a guide that will point you in the right direction so you can rejuvenate your website and ensure all aspects of your business online and offline are as up-to-date as possible! Website Tip #1 – Blog regularly – do you blog? Well done, you’re generating rich content that will keep your customers updated and simultaneously improve your SEO ranking. You don’t blog consistently? Not so good. Utilizing blogging is a significant aspect of inbound marketing techniques but what many people don’t understand is that you need to concentrate on generating regular posts i.e. once a week or even once a month. Going on a blogging spree is no use. Posting frequently for 3 weeks straights and not touching it again for the next 2 months is more or less useless I’m afraid. Number 1, you’re going to piss of your subscribers by spamming their inbox with content that is not of huge importance to them, certainly not worthy of daily updates. Secondly, you’ve just used up all your rich content in a short period of time and have now run out of things to say. HINT* if you don’t have the time to update a blog consistently, schedule a day where you make yourself sit down and write out 4  blog posts – having done so, schedule your posts. Arrange that 1 post goes out at the start of every week and hey presto, for one day of blogging, you are now blogging consistently every week! Website Tip #2 – Add Images & Videos to Your Website – Using a portfolio or gallery section can be a great way of consistently adding fresh, rich content to your website. By doing so, you’re essentially killing to birds with one stone – you’re keeping the site relevant by generating new contents and simultaneously, you’re showing off the wide array of things your business can do. Although search engines do not search photos and videos directly, you can add a description behind each image or video you upload – in terms of SEO, you’re now successfully keeping the site relevant and ensuring that there is new info. to search through for those little bots. HINT* think of your website as a magazine rather than a brochure. Instead of designing a once off template, you must always think about updating the content to keep your “readers” interested. Website Tip #3 – Optimise for mobile – according to Statista, 17.4% of the global web traffic has come directly through mobile, highlighting a significant growth of nearly 6% since 2012. Having worked with many restaurants and pubs in the past, we have found that a large majority upload their menus in a PDF format which is fine…however, with the growth in mobile browsing, it can prove to be a difficult and annoying process, using up significant mobile data to download these menus. Why not simply promote your menus in a HTML format, providing a simple and quick user experience. Another pet peeve has to be “pinching” and zooming on your device to view a website – this infuriates myself and many other web users. Is Your Site Optimised For Mobile? HINT*  talk to us about mobile optimization for your website…this is a relatively simple yet effective update that all businesses should consider in 2014. Your website must be considered as a vehicle for two-way communication. You must think about pushing out relevant, rich and consistent content that appeals to your target market. However, it is equally if not more important that users can easily navigate through the content. Schedule your business for a free 1-hour consultation to see what changes you can make to your site today.