United States
Updated: May 1st, 2023
Your business website is crucial to drawing in new customers, converting leads, and keeping current customers engaged. And if you provide digital services or run an ecommerce company, your website isn’t just important—it’s the backbone of your operation, serving as your online storefront. If your site looks outdated or incomplete, customers might be less likely to trust you.
HubSpot’s Not Another State of Marketing Report 2021 found that next to social media, a website is the second most important marketing channel for businesses. However, one in five businesses said low website traffic was one of their biggest problems, according to 2020 research from Top Design Firms.
As more businesses move online and customer demand for digital options increases, it’s critical to invest in the look and functionality of your website. If it’s been a while since you’ve examined your site, it might be time for a strategic refresh.
Here are seven steps to update your business website and bring in more traffic:
Before you can improve your website, you need to understand what’s working and what isn’t—from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective. Start by reviewing your website analytics. Monthly site visitors, page clicks, and bounce rate can give you insight into how many people engage with your site, where they spend their time, and for how long.
From there, explore your site from a customer’s or client’s perspective. You can browse it yourself or ask a trusted friend or fellow business owner to give you honest feedback. Either way, make sure you ask the following questions as you go:
There are countless ways to engage customers with your website, but one of the best options is to design your site for the small screen. In other words, make sure your site looks as attractive and readable on mobile as it does on a desktop computer. According to HubSpot’s 2020 State of Marketing report, optimizing your site for mobile is the number one way to improve its performance and ranking.
To create a mobile-first site, you may need to change the size of your images, cut down your text, reconfigure page layouts, or update your code. Depending on your resources, you could either hire a web design company or switch to a website hosting platform—like Wix or Squarespace—that offers mobile-ready templates. The goal is to make sure people who visit your site from their phone or tablet can:
As the first web page visitors see, a landing page has the power to keep people scrolling—or turn them away. The way you structure your landing page depends on your primary website goal. Do you want to build brand awareness, for example, get customers to search for products, or encourage people to subscribe to an email newsletter?
Once you clarify the purpose of your landing page, you can make changes to ensure it’s visually intriguing, informative, and current. Here are just a few strategies to make your landing page pop:
The words on your website are just as critical as your images and layout. Not only does your web copy serve a practical purpose—to share information—it also gives customers and clients a glimpse into your business’s voice and style.
Here are some web copy best practices to follow:
Certain features can give your customers a better overall experience when visiting your site, not to mention improve your customer satisfaction scores and sales numbers. Depending on your business, you may want to add one or more of the following:
Chatbots are the technology behind pop-up boxes and chat windows on websites. According to Intercom’s 2019 Chatbot Trends Report, chatbots increased the average business’s customer service responses by three times. Powered by artificial intelligence, chatbots can answer customer questions, recommend products, share resources, and route customers to different web pages. The result: customers get on-demand help without having to call your business’s number or send an email.
Online booking software gives customers or clients the option to schedule appointments or services directly through your website whenever it’s convenient for them. Certain booking platforms can also send customers appointment reminders and process their payments ahead of time.
Ecommerce businesses aren’t the only ones that need secure online payment options—service-based businesses like restaurants and spas can benefit, too. If you want to give your customers the ability to pay online, make sure you choose a payment integration that allows them to input their information easily and choose from a handful of payment methods.
Your business website is the perfect place to experiment with content marketing tactics that drive traffic. The right content can help bring new visitors to your site, establish your business as an authority on a certain subject, foster trust with new customers, and build loyalty with existing customers.
Videos, blog posts, and infographics are the top three forms of content most marketers use according to HubSpot’s 2021 report, but you can also dabble with:
You can approach your website content from a more educational or salesy standpoint; either way, make sure you’re offering valuable information that’s relevant to your customers or clients.
A foolproof way to generate more web traffic is to pay attention to search engine optimization (SEO) best practices. The first step is to find out what matters most to your target customers and clients. What are the questions and phrases they search on Google when looking for help or answers? From there, you can make an SEO plan that includes the following actions:
The key to maintaining a great business website is to continue evolving. Set aside time every quarter to evaluate your website’s look, update information, push out new content, assess your analytics, and fix backend bugs. Updating your website on a regular basis can help you stay on top of trends, satisfy customers, and generate new leads.
Paige Smith is a content marketing writer who specializes in writing about the intersection of business, finance, and tech. Paige regularly writes for a number of B2B industry leaders, including fintech companies, small business lenders, and business credit resource sites.
Get our latest news and information on business finance, management and growth.
