A New Year always energises and motivates business owners to step things up for the next 12 months. It’s a time for setting new goals and looking at things afresh. Most of us will make commitments to progress over the next 12 months both business-wise and personally.
For some the next 12 months will see progress in business whilst for others, it might be a little more challenging. However, the one thing that can help us all is by ensuring our marketing is on point, especially when it comes to our website.
Our website should play a crucial role in our 2023 marketing with everyone now using online to grow their business. If you want your website to help you achieve your 2023 goals here are 10 things you need to be doing.
1. Commit to regular updates
One thing that every business owner must understand regards their website is that it won’t work if you don’t. Gone are the days when you can launch a website and expect it to hit the heights of the top Google places without you putting the effort in. It just doesn’t happen.
A website will work for your business, in fact, it will be one of the most profitable investments that you make but you have to take action. You cannot leave it to sit online, never touch it or update it and expect it to deliver for you. You have to ensure you are regularly updating it.
Here are some additions you can make to your website on a regular basis:
Simply commit a few hours a month to adding new content throughout 2023 and you will see growth on what your website generates for your business.
2. Understand trends
Over 2022 social media became more unpredictable and unstable than ever before. Clubhouse pretty much vanished, TikTok continued to storm onto the scene and the likes of Twitter and Facebook became more unpredictable and problematic.
The unpredictability of these platforms has created a sense of fear, especially for those that use these platforms to generate business. In fact, for some business owners, some social media platforms generate a large percentage of their income and when these platforms change algorithms or make huge changes it can radically impact their bottom line.
Current trends mean people are working harder to become less reliant on platforms they cannot control. Business owners need to create as much stability as possible and at present social media is not offering this.
This has resulted in businesses making moves to be less reliant on social media and instead put more focus on websites where you have greater control and ownership. No matter what happens you have your website, and no one is taking that away from you. Yes, you still have to deal with Google and their updates, but this is much less volatile than social media and gives you much more control over your future.
4. Appreciate content quality
It’s apparent that over recent years Google has put much more emphasis on the quality of website content and that is not set to change anytime soon. They want your website to be full of good quality, well-written and educational content that attracts your audience. This gives your website users a better experience and that is what Google are prioritising.
It isn’t acceptable to Google that websites are full of spammy and poorly written content, especially if it’s obvious it purely exists for SEO purposes. When adding content to your website ensure it’s of good quality and achieves the purpose for which you are adding it. If need be hire a copywriter that will do this for you.
Make sure every piece of content you add is:
4. Never stop asking
If you want to generate leads from your website, then you better be asking for them. You will not win business if you don’t ask for business.
If your website lacks clear next steps that you want your visitors to take then do these 3 things…
Remember, if you don’t ask then you don’t get.
5. Move away from stock
Not all stock photography is bad, but the reality is, a lot of it is. Please, please, please don’t put nasty, cheap-looking stock photos on your website.
You can get some good free imagery from the likes of Pexels and FreePik but it’s limited. Get what you can from these platforms but if not invest in some paid imagery from the likes of Shutterstock. It’s not overly expensive and can really enhance the look and feel of your website.
The best scenario is to always have a professional photographer take custom shots for you. These look professional, showcase you and what you are about and enhance the quality of your website. We appreciate not everyone can do this but, if possible, make it happen.
The main message though, steer away from the cheap and nasty-looking shots.
6. Optimise, optimise and optimise
If you want to bring organic traffic to your website, then you have to work hard on the optimisation of your site. Again, it’s not something you can just sit around and hope for, you have to take action.
Google will crawl your website on a regular basis, and they can only lift your ranking based on what they find. A well-optimised website using the right keywords and well-structured content will naturally beat its competitors.
It might be that you need to bring in professional help for SEO services but without question, if you want regular lead generation from your website, optimisation is needed.
7. Be speed aware
Another aspect that Google are putting emphasis on is the speed of your website. Google are looking for websites with super-fast load times. Can we also add, customers are looking for this too.
There are so many factors that play a part in the speed of your website such as:
Websites that are running slow can often be sped up, but it’s much better to get this right in the early days of a site. As we say there are so many factors that come into play when addressing speed, but it's something you need to address if loading speed is a problem on your website.
8. Collect rave reviews
You cannot underestimate the power of positive reviews on your website. It does not matter your industry or customer base, every website needs to contain proof that you are good at what you do.
Whether it be simple written testimonials that appear on your website, photos of completed projects, case studies or reviews that are fed from Google or Trustpilot you need them and you need them to be regularly updated.
Work hard on collecting customer good news stories and ensure they are added to your website regularly. Also, ensure they are prominently placed, don’t hide them away and instead give them pride of place on your home page. You won’t regret it.
9. Educate as much as entertain
There is so much focus on what a website looks like, that we can lose focus on what we actually want to achieve from our site. There is no question that a website needs to look good and show we are a professional outfit. This is vital, but we also need balance. Sometimes we make it all about looks and not enough about substance. The reality is, we need both.
When it comes to your website ask yourself these questions:
Don’t mishear what we are saying, the look and style of your website is vitally important but ensure you balance that with the quality of content on your website.
10. Don’t quit on email
One thing that we believe many businesses are not utilising is the power of email. We hear…
“Emails don’t work”
“Regular emails are dead”
We don’t believe so.
How you package them needs to be different and creative, you also need to be consistent in sending them out and growing your email list, but there is no question that emails can work.
When you have email marketing as part of your 2023 strategy you are again taking control and not giving power to social media platforms. You own that data and that information and no one is taking that away from you.
Ensure your website gives people the ability to register for receiving updates from you and ideally if you can give them an incentive to do so that will help. Over 2023 you can do this for little work and when operating alongside your other marketing it can prove to be very profitable.
Choose Purple are a web and marketing agency located near Sheffield. Working with clients across the UK, we help you to win more business through our range of marketing services. Contact us here to discuss your requirements.
