Top 5 Reasons You Should Update Your Website Today

Here’s the question: why should you update your website? Well, the year is 2020, and it’s a weird one. I don’t think anyone would deny me that statement. Despite all the unusual and strange happening in our world today, there are a few things that I know to still be true.

1. Coffee still makes my world go ’round.
2. Your website still needs to be up-to-date in order to put your best foot forward with your small business.

Every which way you spin it, your website is the face of your business. Especially these days, when many of us are practicing the art of social distancing. Right now, your website is arguably one of the most important aspects of your business. It’s very important that you’re keeping it updated on a regular basis.

Here are the top 5 reasons your small business should update your website.

01. Visual Appeal

Updating your website to improve its visual appeal is one of the biggest reasons that small businesses should make the decision to update their website.

This one is probably the most obvious. You want your website to look good.?But above just the “I want it to look good,” reason, it’s very important that your website reflects your business on a brand level.

Think of it this way, when you’re ready to make a sales pitch to a potential client, you put your best out there for them. You’re not dressed in sweat pants and a coffee-stained t-shirt while you’re scrambling around for some misplaced sticky notes with your selling point scribbled on them. No, I’d bet your bottom dollar that you?look the part, you dress the part, and you’re prepared for the pitch in every way. You put effort into what you’re going to do and say to make sure that your potential client knows exactly who you are, what you do, and why you can make their life better.

Guess what? Your website should be doing that too. Let that sink in for a moment.

Is your website dressed in sweatpants and a coffee-stained t-shirt or crisp button-down? Is it searching for scribbles or is it presenting with a fine-tuned presentation that will knock some socks off? If your website isn’t putting the same amount of effort (or more) into selling your business, you need to update your website.

02. User Experience & Usability

The second reason on my list for why you should update your website is user experience and usability.

When a visitor lands on your website, it’s an opportunity to make a sale. They’ve landed on your website for a reason. It’s now your website’s job to help them navigate through the pages to reach their destination. The usability of your website will play a huge role in this effort. If your website is hard to use, a visitor is not going to stay there. They’re moving on to their next option. Here are a few key points that are going to affect how usable your website actually is:

• Navigation – your website needs to be easy to navigate.
• Call to actions – your website should have clear calls to action and they should be easy to find and execute, multiple times over.
• Internal web links – make it easy for visitors to find more information within your site without having to think or work to get there.
• Responsiveness – if your website doesn’t work for the mobile phone these days, forget about it.
• Page speed – if your page load speed is slow, chances are your visitors aren’t going to stick around to find out what they’re missing.

All of these things (and more) affect how the visitor’s experience on your website is going to go. If your visitor isn’t having a good experience, if the usability is low, they will bounce from your website. BOOM, you just lost yourself a potential sale. Also, fun fact, all of these things have a huge impact on your website SEO.

03. Updated Content

Content is the backbone of your website. No matter how visually appealing or usable your website is, if the content isn’t there?it’s not going to matter.

Quality content still needs to be a priority for your website. Once you’ve grabbed the visitors’ attention, you need to make sure the meat and potatoes of the website can deliver. Your content needs to?help your visitors make informed decisions about your product or service. Copy needs to be informative, simple, and effective. Make sure it’s on-target and you’re using keywords and phrases that will help visitors make the decision to purchase.

Above and beyond helping your visitors experience on your website, quality content is also going to help you with SEO and bring in new visitors. This reason alone, it’s a good idea to keep your content fresh and up-to-date and why you should update your website.

04. Responsive & Mobile Friendly

If your website is ignoring the experience of the mobile device user, you’re probably missing out on a ton of potential sales.?

People are obsessed with their mobile devices. Plain and simple. We’re spending close to 2 hours a day on our mobile phones. If your website isn’t responsive, you’re not delivering a good experience to the visitor. In today’s world, you can’t ignore them. In fact, in 2015, Google even added a mobile-first algorithm update to its search ranking factors.

The bottom line, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly it’s a clear sign that you should update your website.

05. Website Speed

If your website is slow, you need to update your website.?

This one is easy and very straightforward. People don’t have the patience to wait for slow load times. If your webpages are loading slowly, chances are you’re driving away traffic, and it’s likely they are never coming back. If you want to check your current website’s load times, check out Google’s PageSpeed Insights. It’s free to use and will give you a good idea if your page speed needs to be addressed.

So there you have it, the Top 5 Reasons You Should Update Your Website. If you’ve read through this list and realize it’s time for an update, JW Creative can definitely help you out. We specialize in providing small businesses with updated, user-friendly websites. We’re here and ready to help bring your website up to speed. (<– Ha, see what I just did there!)