This decade had a tumultuous beginning — a pandemic followed by a global economic recession. With so much upheaval, it can be easy for organizations to neglect some component of their overall marketing strategy, and website updates are often first to get short shrift. Paradoxically, the lockdowns that spread across the globe accelerated digitization, meaning your potential prospects actually expect more from every online experience. Since it only takes 0.05 seconds for someone to form an opinion about your website, your web design, content, and functionality need to rise to the occasion.1
In the midst of COVID-19, some businesses chose to prioritize their website development, and they are reaping the rewards of their foresight as the online world continues to evolve at a rapid pace. Others remained stagnant, and their brand is becoming increasingly irrelevant in an industry that shows no signs of slowing down.
So, why does having an optimized website really matter? There are five concrete reasons to update your website regularly — and if it’s been more than a couple of years, the time is right now.
1. User Experience
To stay current, sustain, and grow your online presence, your website must adapt to an audience that is more mobile and more focused on diversity. Over 60% of website traffic comes from people using mobile devices.2 Have you explored the mobile view of your website lately? If people have a clunky or dysfunctional experience visiting your site from their phone or tablet, you could be losing customers.
In terms of diversity, it’s more than just a buzzword of the moment; it’s an industry-wide priority across all areas of business, from patients to staffing. In terms of your website user experience, it’s important to make sure that you both show and tell your diversity story in an authentic way. When visitors arrive at your site, do they see imagery and graphic elements that reflect diverse abilities, cultures, genders, and races? If not, you can bet your current and potential clients and employees are taking note.
Lack of mobile optimization; use of unengaging, unintuitive design and layout; and lack of an inclusive presence from click one all result in degradation of your site’s user experience. You’re likely to see increased “bounces” and an overall decline in traffic month over month the longer you retain use of an outdated website.
The good news is, with the right website services partner, you can completely refresh or reset your online presence by tapping into comprehensive design and development support to produce amazing results.
2. Content Updates
Your website is your most important salesperson, and it should serve as a central hub for all the content you and your team create. From company news to blogs to case studies, white papers, and more, your current and potential customers should be able to journey through your sales funnel from awareness to consideration to the decision to purchase by navigating seamlessly through your site’s content assets and primary webpage content.
As such, your website needs targeted, meaningful, and frequent content updates and additions. Does your primary page copy reflect your company’s up-to-the-minute values, key messaging, and capabilities? Do visitors to your site find new thought-leadership level content to engage with month over month? Do all your services have quick-grab sales sheets that your customers and BD team alike can access?
These are just some of the questions to consider when looking at whether your content is up to par with what your business and your customers need. Doing occasional updates of photos, videos, and other visual content assets can also make a positive impact on your target audience. Keeping your content fresh sends the message that you are actively involved in your online presence — and this helps your customers stay interested and engaged.
Infuse strategic content planning and curation to your website, leveraging a multitude of mediums to position your subject matter experts as authoritative thought leaders.
3. SEO Optimization
Content is always competing with other content to grab and keep your target audience’s attention. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is one highly effective way to get eyes on your content assets, but it’s also important to ensure that the copy itself is doing some of the heavy lifting so you can generate more organic traffic. That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.
SEO algorithms are always changing, so it can be tricky to make the exact modifications needed to increase your search ranking and visibility without help from an SEO expert. Our SEO specialists analyze the four most important SEO factors when optimizing every online deliverable:
META TITLES & DESCRIPTIONS
Are you optimizing the most important contributing factor for SEO results?
Both fields require strategic and balanced keyword usage.
SITE USAGE
DATA
What are people actually doing on your site? Where are they going, and how long do they stay there?
The most important metrics are typically bounce rate and dwell time.
READABILITY
& DESIGN
Can people easily navigate your site?
If people have a hard time navigating your site, your SEO ranking and overall visibility will decline.
PERCEIVED
PAGE VAULE
Does each page contain something of value to those searching the target queries?
If your webpages lack value, search engines will deprioritize your position in their results.
4. Accessibility
Simply put, your website needs to be accessible to as many people as possible — easy to read and easy to navigate. In an ideal world, this means your website is aligned with the most demanding levels of the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). For websites in the United States, this could mean adapting to the Department of Justice’s most recent guidance on accessibility concerning the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). No matter the precise context, creating a website that is truly accessible often requires expert guidance and a targeted review.
Evaluating and revamping a website’s accessibility comes with a host of considerations, such as choosing the right contrast between colors, utilizing alternative text for images, consistently captioning video and form deliverables, and providing effective mouse-only navigation. Optimizing for each consideration ensures your site is equitable and outfitted for the future. What’s more, a website that is made truly accessible sets a confident and inclusive tone for your company.
5. Brand Refresh
If your messaging and brand design is several years old, it’s time to consider an exciting refresh. And if you are undergoing a merger, acquisition, or large-scale organizational shift, your company identity needs a complete rebrand. Either way, a fresh and fully optimized website is a critical aspect of any effort to establish a stronger brand. A fresh look can indicate a new direction for your company, or it can simply signal to the industry that you have modernized your way of doing business.
Ask yourself: What’s the big idea behind your brand?
Get More With SCORR Services and Solutions
Will Rogers, a renowned American stage performer of the early 1900s, famously said, “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.”
That may be true, but the right website updates can give you a second chance at shaping those first impressions. A fresh and fully optimized website that is aligned with your organization ensures that you hit the mark with your audience every time. With SCORR’s website development services, your site will become an effective and inspiring anchor for your brand, your messaging, and your overall visibility.
References
1 Chamat, R. 8 Ways Media. Visual Design: Why First Impressions Matter. Published 2019 June 5.
2 Howarth, J. Exploding Topics. Internet Traffic from Mobile Devices. Published 2023 March 6.
About the Author
Marcus Wagner