As the end of the year approaches and you start thinking about your marketing plan for 2013, it is a good time for an annual review of your website. Even if you just recently just launched a new website, the world of website marketing is changing at such a high rate that you should consider looking over your site and asking a few hard-hitting questions.
Here are 6 questions to ask yourself and your staff to complete a website review.
1. Analytics: Are visitors engaged with our site? By looking at the pages that are getting the most visits, and checking to see if visitors are viewing more than three pages, you can determine if they are moving around and exploring your site. Are they staying for more than three minutes? The fix? Add links to your compelling content on other pages on the site. Add a blog. Maybe add functionality that will keep visitors engaged, such as a calculator, or other tool that helps them to solve a problem,. Other ideas might be to add a white paper or checklist. Add forms and call to action buttons.
2. Fresh eyes: What does our website say about our company/organization? Have someone in your target audience look at your site. Ask them what they think you sell, what your mission is and what they would like to know more about. Does your site still represent your brand?
3. Messages: Are our top three key messages dramatic and front and center? Often as the year goes by your messages change. Make sure the three most important messages are easy to pick out.
4. Technology: Is our site out dated? For many organizations going mobile is very important. For the average site, 20 percent of the visitors are using mobile. This is up 7 percent from just a year ago. And many sites, especially those which get a lot of visits from email, are in the 50 to 70 percent range. So how does your site look on a mobile device? Does it still work as you would like?
5. SEO Tags: Are our titles and descriptions up-to-date? If you’ve added pages during the year or updated your content or changed target keywords, then chances are your meta tags need to be reviewed. Make sure that everything on the page targets your keywords. This include: URL, header, links, text, titles and descriptions.
6. More Visitors: Do we need to increase traffic to our site? If you feel your site is doing a good job, but not attracting enough traffic, then look at adding more content. When there are more pages on a website and more compelling content, then there is a greater chance that you will get found on a search engine. Evaluate what you are doing to create links to your site. Are you sending out press releases, email, and direct mail? Are you enticing visitors to your trade show booth to visit your site by offering incentives? Do you have an exciting and interesting video? If not, you know what to add to your 2013 marketing plan.
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Barbara Irias, Vice President and website development professional.
