growth driven design process

Discovering The Growth-Driven Design Process

Building a new website is a big under taking for any sized business. You want to make sure that your website looks and feels the way that you imagined it would, while also having incredible content that attracts customers and keeps them coming back for more. There is no magic, one-size fits all approach to web design, but the Growth Driven Design process is a new development method that may benefit you. Read more

website redesign process

Growth Driven Web Design: A Website As Active As You

No company is stagnant. If you are a business owner, you understand this better than anyone. Revenues and sales change from month to month, goals shift and adapt as deadlines draw near, and new employees bring fresh perspective and energy to the company. So why do so many websites stay idle as the company they represent continues to change? Growth driven web design is a new approach that many companies, large and small, are benefiting from. Regarding attraction marketing, a good website design will help to attract customers.

What Is Growth Driven Web Design

With traditional web design, it is typical for a website to remain unchanged for over a year. This could spell trouble if your website does not satisfy the needs of your visitors. If visitors find that your website does offer a solution to their needs, they will move on to your competitors website without a second thought. With growth-driven web design, you are able to adapt your website to better fit your visitor’s needs as you begin to understand them.

Read More About Discovering the Growth Driven Design Process

As customers come to visit your website, what would you like to know about them? Things like how long do they stay on my website, what are their favorite pages, and how many of them actually are interested in my product are probably some of the first things that come to mind, right? With traditional website design, these questions cannot be answered until the website is completed, but by then it’s too late. With this new style of website design, these questions are not only answered, but addressed. By seeing where potential customers are looking, small changes to the website can help lead them where you want them to go.

Why Growth Driven Design Works

So how does one decide which changes to make? Obviously, every website and every industry is going to be different. With growth-driven web design, you are able to determine which aspects within the website should be given the biggest priority based on the characteristics of your website’s visitors. For some, the best way to increase conversion rates will be focusing on the landing page. Others may notice that the blog should be given the highest priority because that’s where most of their online traffic is coming from. In either case, this new approach to web design focuses on making necessary changes to these pages to meet the marketing goals we’d like to see you achieve.

A website should be as active as the person who owns it. A good sales associate would never stick to a single sales approach for each of their clients. They understand that constantly changing and adapting leads to their desired outcome. So why not let your website behave in the same way you would? By constantly and consistently improving your website, you are taking steps to optimize your customers online experience. As more traffic flows into your website and more of those people find what they are looking for, your business will see a significant increase in sales and customer satisfaction. We know this because growth-driven web design gathers information from your website’s visitors and uses that data to drive the decisions that will make your website stand out.

What about you? Do you think your business can benefit from a growth-driven web design? What would you like to learn about your website’s visitors? To learn more, click the link below for more information.

  25 Website Must Haves For Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales

website strategy

The Best Strategies for Website Engagement in 2021

The way people engage with businesses tends to evolve over time. At no point has this been more obvious than during the past year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. More people were either unemployed or working from home than ever before, resulting in more time being spent online. Because many people have transitioned to work-at-home, there’s a good chance that they will remain there. Because of this, website engagement is as important as ever.

However, this doesn’t mean that you automatically have their attention. You still need to find a way to engage them — and to keep them engaged. This is especially true when you consider that the average person spends no more than 15 seconds on any given website before they leave. With that in mind, the following are a few effective strategies for boosting your website engagement this year:

1. Eliminate Technical Issues

Knowing that the average user is going to have a short attention span, the last thing you’ll want to do is waste their time with technical issues. Technical issues, such as broken links or slow loading times, will frustrate visitors — especially first-time visitors. Most will leave your site a few seconds after encountering a technical problem, and odds are they’ll head straight to the site of a competitor. Make sure that all of your pages load within a few seconds and that there are no broken links.

2. Create Relevant Content

A technically sound website will help prevent visitors from becoming disengaged immediately; however, good content is what will keep them engaged for longer. Do not focus on promotional content. Online users are constantly bombarded with ads wherever they go, which means that if they go to a site that feels like it’s trying too hard to sell something to them, they will leave. Instead, create content that addresses their problems and needs. Good content that educates visitors will build your brand authority and trust as well. As a result, not only are they more likely to stay on your site for longer, they’ll be more likely to come back — and even to share your content on social media.

There is a lot of competition in websites between businesses. Here are more tips to keep your site competitive.

3. Make Your Content Easy To Read

Even if your content is of high quality, visitors may give up on it if you don’t make it easy for them to read. For instance, if your main page is just a wall of text, it will give visitors a headache as they try to read it. You should break your content up using headers, bullet points, numbers, and supplementary visual content. The easier it is for visitors to read your content, the more likely they’ll be to read it through to the end.

4. Optimize Your Website Engagement For Mobile Use

Despite the fact that more people are online from the comfort of their own homes than before, many of them will still be surfing the web via their mobile devices, such as their smartphones or tablets. On top of that, the country has slowly been getting back to normal since the vaccine rollout, meaning more people are leaving their homes with their mobile devices. As such, you need to make sure your website and all of your content is optimized for mobile use. Otherwise, it won’t display properly on smaller screens, making it a pain to navigate. Mobile users won’t stay on websites that aren’t mobile-friendly for very long as a result.

website design

5. Add Video Content

Human beings are visual creatures. As such, they tend to absorb visual information better. While written content is still quite effective, you should also invest in video content. People are more likely to watch through a short video than they are to read through a written blog post. This is especially true for mobile users.

6. Add Social Proof

Adding social proof to your website will create trust in new visitors. Most people will be a touch skeptical when they visit a new website they’ve never been to before. Social proof helps to reinforce your reputation. For example, positive reviews from well-known sources in the industry or social media influencers can help boost your trustworthiness, as can customer reviews or customer testimonials. The more social proof you have on your site, the more at ease visitors will be, making it easier to obtain website engagement.

7. Implement A Chat Feature

A live chat feature or a chatbot can go a long way towards making sure visitors stay engaged while checking out your site. With a chat feature, you can engage visitors the moment they arrive on your site. A chat feature can also help guide visitors by helping them find what they’re looking for, thereby making sure that they don’t leave out of frustration.

Keeping your visitors engaged is essential to making sure you don’t lose any potential leads. The more engaged your visitors are, the better of a chance you’ll have of nurturing them through the sales funnel. As such, be sure to consider implementing these strategies to help improve your website engagement in 2021.

  25 Website Must Haves For Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales
healthcare marketing agency

Five Tips for Effective Inbound Marketing for Healthcare

Quality healthcare has always been important, but it’s even more important during the pandemic. More people are searching for health-related information than ever before. As such, it’s critical that your healthcare business is in a position to be found. To achieve this, you need to implement a strong, long-term inbound marketing strategy. A good inbound marketing strategy can help drive awareness of your business and help generate more leads. It’s why you should work with a reputable healthcare marketing agency. With that in mind, the following are five essential inbound marketing tips for healthcare businesses:

1. Add Educational Content To Your Website

One of the most important goals you should have is to build trust with your audience. Trust is essential to any healthcare business; after all, your customers are often putting their lives in your hands. With that in mind, you should add educational content to your website. This content shouldn’t promote your services or products. Instead, it should educate your audience. The more informed they are, the more confident they will be in making a purchasing decision. Not to mention that it helps build your brand authority, which directly increases trust.

COVID-19 Content

An example of educational content might be a page dedicated to COVID-19. This page could explain what the symptoms are, what patients should do if they exhibit symptoms, and how they should seek help if needed. Not only are you providing valuable information that can save lives, but you’re also providing relevant information that can build trust.

2. Build A Compelling Website

Your website is the foundation of your inbound marketing efforts. It doesn’t matter how good your content is if your website is poor. The following are just a few important elements of a compelling website:

  • No technical issues – Broken links and slow loading pages can hinder the user experience. Few visitors will stay on your site for more than a few seconds if they’re encountering technical problems.
  • Visually pleasing layout – Your website should be visually pleasing. A poorly designed website that looks outdated will give visitors reservations about your healthcare company’s quality.
  • Easy navigation – Your site should be easy to navigate. Make it easy for your visitors to jump from one section to another and to find what they’re looking for.  Besides a solid navigation menu, you should also use internal links to help guide your visitors to related content and pages.
  • Ability to contact you – Whether visitors have questions or want to schedule appointments, it’s vital that you make it easy for them to contact you. Your contact information should be on every page. However, you should also have a page dedicated to your contact information where visitors can fill out a form. You should also think about incorporating a live chat or chatbot feature to provide basic information and guidance.

3. Maximize Your Email Marketing Strategy

Email marketing has been an incredibly cost-effective marketing strategy since the beginning of online marketing. Healthcare companies, in particular, can benefit from email marketing. For example, you can create an email newsletter that leads and customers alike can sign up for. You can use this newsletter to educate your audience and to build trust in your brand. You can achieve this by using your newsletter to provide new health information,  healthcare tips, and office updates. A good email marketing strategy can allow you to nurture more leads and encourage more appointments.

4. Use Social Media

Social media is one of the best ways to engage directly with your target audience. Many people turn to social media in order to seek healthcare-related advice. In fact, it’s estimated that 40 percent of people say that they use information they found on social media to make health-related decisions. If you establish a regular presence on your social media channels, you’ll be able to offer professional advice to potential patients. As a result of such engagement, you can build trust. Not to mention that any interactions you have will be public, which will help to generate more brand awareness.

5. Create A Blog

While you should have educational content throughout your website, a blog can be particularly helpful. A blog allows you to publish new content on a regular basis. It also allows you to publish content that may be relevant to a specific time. For instance, a post on health-care-related laws passed during the pandemic would be a great blog post. However, you can use your blog to post about all kinds of general disease information.

An effective healthcare inbound marketing strategy is essential to your company’s success, especially at this point in time. Although these marketing tips are incredibly effective, they do require time, experience, and expertise to implement successfully. As such, you should strongly consider working with a professional healthcare marketing agency.

5 mobile marketing techniques to build your ecommerce brand

5 Mobile Marketing Techniques To Build Your Ecommerce Brand

It should come as no surprise that a strong mobile presence is indispensable in today’s market. After all, the average user spends most of their Internet time on their smartphone as opposed to their desktop.

Whether your company is just starting up or has reached the point of maintaining a well-established customer base, it’s important to stay up to date with the most current marketing trends and techniques for your ecommerce business. Structuring and launching an ecommerce website is a milestone achievement for your brand. Therefore, it’s crucial to invest in effective mobile marketing techniques, and here are five tips on how to do so:

1. Website Design

A website is your most important marketing and communication tool, as it connects you with your user. In a world so dominated by mobile devices, most brands cannot afford to miss the mark with a website that is NOT optimized for users on smartphones, tablets, or whatever their device of choice may be. If you’re an ecommerce brand, you want to make sure that your website is ready for their devices.

Some brands quickly jump to a mobile app when it’s time to make “mobile decisions”. However, it’s not always the most efficient choice for each and every brand. Ultimately, they should be developed once you already have a mobile-friendly website as well. 9 times out of 10, an app should not be created in place of a mobile-friendly site, but instead in addition to it. Apps can be costly endeavors, and to be successful they must offer some sort of value that the mobile site doesn’t, otherwise there is no real incentive for the user to download the app and use it on a regular basis.

Particularly with ecommerce brands, a responsive design is incredibly important. The size of a mobile screen is significantly smaller than that of a desktop. As a result, the website should appear a bit differently. However, you want to ensure that your customers do not face any issues. This can range from viewing product images, scrolling through pages, clicking on buttons, finding a certain product, or typing in billing information into form fields. Websites that aren’t responsive in their design typically contain flaws with these key elements. These can act as a major deterrence in the mobile user completing the purchase. If you’re implementing mobile marketing techniques to drive mobile traffic, you want to make sure your website is ready to perform. Preferably before you begin marketing to your mobile users and driving traffic to your website.

2. Referral Marketing

We are all social creatures, and we love sharing our experiences with our families and friends. If we have a good experience, we’ll want everyone to know about it. It is for that reason that referral marketing (also known as word-of-mouth marketing) is one of the most powerful, yet underrated ecommerce mobile marketing techniques available. Referral marketing  is when you deliberately influence the process of word-of-mouth. Whether it is encouraging more sharing, or positioning the sharing to be positive. Referral marketing is a secret weapon that many ecommerce companies embrace. It benefits advertisers too-we help each other avoid bad experiences, and encourage each other to support places that provide an excellent experience.

The fastest and easiest way to kick-start  referral marketing is to set up a referral program. If you have the resources, you can hire a developer to custom design a referral program for your store. This allows you to have full control over your referral program, but the work may be tedious and resource-intensive. An alternative is to install a referral program app. A referral app allows you to get started quickly, as everything is (almost) done-for-you. However, if you do not promote your referral program, nobody will know of it. So do all you can to promote it, and let people know about it.  Share it on your social media and send it on your email list. Invite all of your past customers to join your referral program. You will be sure to notice results.

3. Mobile Friendly Email MarketingMobile Marketing Techniques 3

Most ecommerce customers check their inbox from their smartphone, not from a desktop. Emails that get opened on mobile devices yet aren’t optimized for those devices typically get sent to trash. It’s a waste of time and budget to produce emails that are too difficult to read on mobile, or do not render correctly on mobile devices.

To ensure that your efforts are not wasted, it is worth checking to make sure your email marketing is mobile-friendly. Use a responsive design for all of your emails so that the content renders well regardless of device. This is one of many options that can help create an optimal experience for your email recipients. As a result they can actually see your perceived value and subsequently visit your mobile-friendly site after receiving the message.

Some visual tips to include are fonts that are easy-to-read, stick to one column of text, use compelling imagery, and always include clickable icons and calls-to-action (CTAs). Think about subject line, and how character count is more limited on mobile inboxes than desktop. Best of all, these guidelines help offer a greater experience on mobile devices, and are beneficial to those on desktop.

Similar Article: How To Outshine Your Competition With Effective Ecommrce Marketing

4. Proper Mobile Friendly Content Marketing

Mobile optimization refers to the elements found on your site infrastructure. As such, consuming content on mobile devices is different than on desktop. Proper content marketing can attract more positive attention, interaction, and sustainable conversions in a way no other marketing method can. That’s because the Internet is content. By creating and promoting original content you are ensuring that your audience is receiving new information that matters to them on a continual basis.

Brainstorm with your team to imagine a list of the different types of content you wish to create. This can be blog posts, videos, and newsletters. Also, make sure you are utilizing your marketing budget by consulting with experts, outsourcing work when necessary. Invest in high-quality software, subscriptions, employees, and training for your team.

You will also find that if you work with the right people, many of the things you’ve paid for in the past can be done internally. Create diversity within your team and listen to everyone’s ideas. It is also a good idea to create content based on Pareto’s 80/20 rule, which means that your promotions should comprise of 80% informational content, and 20% promotional content. All of the content you publish should be relevant, interesting, and unique.

5. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is one of the most powerful mobile marketing techniques available. It allows you to communicate with your industry, customers, and market in a personal way. You can utilize social media to generate engagement and interaction, boost traffic to your website, and develop a larger base of customers.

Utilizing different social media platforms for different purposes also creates a rich presence for your company that diversifies your abilities and efforts. This will ultimately help you cater to your customers’ needs in a way that grows your business over time.

Maintaining a solid tone and personality of your company through social media is very important because consistency is what will create trust within your audience. In order to develop and maintain brand recognition and authority, make sure your outreach efforts are unified; by ensuring your team is on the same page with your company’s communication style.

 A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING TECHNIQUES

Internet Marketing 1

Evaluating Your Internet Marketing Strategy

It’s not only the beginning of a new year, it’s the beginning of a new decade. So what better time to update your internet marketing strategy than now? If it’s been a while since you’ve evaluated your marketing strategy, then it’s time to do so. Even if your marketing efforts have been effective, there’s no reason why they can’t be improved on. The following are five ways that you can update your internet marketing strategy in 2020:

1. Update Your Web Design

Your website design will always be one of the most important aspects of your internet marketing strategy. It’s the foundation from which all of your marketing efforts depend on, after all. If visitors come to your website and it’s difficult to navigate or not aesthetically pleasing, it will leave a poor first impression of your company. Consider the last time that you updated your web design. If it’s been longer than a year, then you may want to consider re-evaluating your website in the event that it could use an update.

Pay attention to how easy it is to navigate. You should make sure that there are clearly marked links to the most important pages of your site on your homepage. Add a search feature to make it easier for visitors to find what they are looking for. Check to see if all of your links are working. Make sure every page loads quickly. These are all important to a successful web design. You should look at competing websites as well to get an idea of what’s working and what isn’t. When it comes to the aesthetic of your site, remember that what may have been popular a few years ago may be significantly outdated tomorrow. These days, clean, elegant, and minimal web designs are preferred.

2. Expand Your Content Strategy

A successful content strategy is one that produces a variety of different types of content. You may be running a successful blog on which you post new articles several times a week, but there are other content creation tactics that you should consider employing in order to improve results. For example, writing guest blogs for companies within your industry that you’re not competing with directly can help to build your audience as well as increase brand authority. If you’re not creating video content yet, then you should begin doing so. Video content is more easily consumed by people, especially those on mobile devices, making it an important component of any modern content marketing strategy.

Learn More: 5 Ways to Update Your Internet Market Strategy in 2020

3. Improve The Effectiveness Of Your Email Marketing StrategyInternet Marketing 2

Because of how old email marketing is, some people may think that it’s an outdated strategy in itself. This is a mistake — email marketing can still be very effective if you do it right. You just need to make sure that your email content can’t be mistaken for spam. The best way to ensure that your email marketing efforts are effective is to use the data you have on your subscribers to segment your email list. This will allow you to send out more relevant content, thereby allowing you to nurture both leads and customers more effectively. You should also begin performing A/B tests on your emails. This will help you pinpoint certain elements (for example, the types of CTAs or titles that you’re using) that result in the best open and conversion rates.

4. Find More Ways To Improve Your Conversion Rate

Be sure to monitor your conversion rates over time. You can identify ways to improve your conversion rate as well by testing different elements. For example, use conversion rate optimization to test images, webpage layouts, CTA buttons, and more to identify what visitors prefer. For example, you might find that a blue CTA button converts more visitors than a red CTA button despite the page layout and content being the same.

5. Continue Leveraging Social Media

Social media is an incredibly cost-effective way to engage directly with your audience. As such, it’s the perfect tool for building relationships, promoting content, and even managing PR. If you’re only using social media to promote content, consider leveraging social media to engage your audience in other ways. For example, begin contributing to discussions that your followers are having. Hold contests on social media to encourage followers to engage with each other. Use social media to collect valuable feedback from your customers. You may also want to re-evaluate your social media strategy to determine if your audience is using any other channels other than the ones you’re on. You want to have a presence wherever your audience is, after all.

As effective as your internet marketing strategy may currently be, you should always be on the lookout for ways that you can improve it. These are five areas that you should focus on when evaluating and improving your internet marketing strategy for the new year.

25 Website Must Haves
website strategy

Planning a Website? Consider Growth-Driven Design

A business without a website is practically unheard of in this day and age. Not having a website severely limits your ability to market your brand. However, designing and building a website can be more difficult than you might think. The traditional way of building a website requires that you figure out exactly what you want your website to have and then launching the completed version. The problem with this method is that you’ll end up having to redesign it after a few years. This is especially true if it turns out that your website isn’t very user-friendly or needs additional features. It’s one of the main reasons that many companies are opting to use Growth-Driven Design instead.

What Is Growth-Driven Design?

Growth-Driven Design (GDD) is a website design methodology that uses an incremental approach. Instead of designing and developing a website and launching it after completion, GDD allows you to launch an incomplete site. The idea is to launch a site with basic functionality and to add to it over time. With GDD, you can continuously test the usability of your site and collect feedback. You can use this data to make changes or add features to your website over time. GDD consists of two phases:

Phase One

During phase one, you need to determine what your users want and need. With that in mind, plan a wishlist of features and functionalities you want for your website. Once a wishlist has been created, you’ll need to prioritize the list by features that will have an immediate impact. You will develop and launch your website to have those core features. Although not complete, your site should have the basic functionality to make it useable.

Phase Two

During phase two, you will analyze the performance of your website. Take into account things like user experience and goal achievement. You will then improve your website using what you’ve learned during specific increments throughout the future (such as every month or every two months). This allows you to continue to build your website even while it’s live.

See how Stevens & Tate implemented a Growth-Driven Design Strategy to help a client: DSI Spaceframes Case Study

The Benefits Of Implementing A Growth-Driven Design

At first glance, it might make more sense to wait until you completely finish the website to launch it. However, there are actually a number of advantages to using GDD instead. The following are some of the main benefits of implementing GDD:

  • Launch your site quickly

    Because the launchpad site only needs to have 20 percent of your wishlist’s features implemented, you’ll be able to launch it much faster. The quicker your site is up and running, the better (as long as it’s functional, of course).

  • Continuously improve your website

    With a traditional website design, what you see is what you get. Once it’s been launched, you’re done. You won’t be able to improve it unless you decide to do a major redesign or update. With

    GDD, you have the opportunity to improve your website continually based on the data you collect.

  • Minimize your risk

    You won’t spend as much money upfront with GDD since you’re launching an incomplete version. With a traditional website design, you’re taking a bigger risk because you’re using your entire design budget in one go. Your website could end up being a failure upon its launch, resulting in the loss of a significant amount of money. By building your website in increments, you’re taking less of a financial risk — especially since your budget can be spread across a longer period of time.

  • Avoid massive redesign projects

    With a traditional website design, you’re going to have to invest in a significant update or website redesign at some point in the future. This will be an expensive undertaking and it will be a necessary one. That’s just the nature of technology. With GDD, this will never be required since you’re constantly updating and improving your site.

  • Gain valuable insight into users

    GDD allows you to use what you learn about your users to continuously improve your site. At the same time, you’ll be gaining valuable insight into users that can be used in your marketing and sales strategies.

  • Evolve your site with your business

    Your business may change over time. With GDD, your website will be able to evolve naturally to keep up with all the changes your business experiences.

You simply can’t go without a company website, no matter how small your business might be. When planning your website design, consider implementing a Growth-Driven Design. Doing so will provide your company with a number of advantages over a more traditional design methodology. With a Growth-Driven Design, you’ll be able to adapt more successfully to the needs of your users, as well as your business.

Website Redesign Checklist
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landing page vs. homepage

The Difference Between Landing page vs. Homepage

Once upon a time, when the web was still in its infancy, the homepage was considered the most important page on your website. While the homepage is an essential component of your website, it shouldn’t necessarily be the first page that visitors see. The webpage functions more as a way to draw visitors into the marketing funnel than anything else. Unfortunately, many businesses focus heavily on sending new leads to their homepage, which can actually be a mistake. Doing so can confuse new visitors because they won’t know where to go from there. Instead, you should be sending new visitors to a landing page. The following is a breakdown of the main differences between landing page vs. homepage.

What Is The Function Of A Homepage?

The homepage is the page that should occupy your root domain. For example, if someone types in www.yourwebsitename.com, it should take them to your homepage. When you add a link to your main social media profiles, you want it to direct users to your homepage. This is because the main function of your homepage is to provide an overview of your company. Visitors should get an idea of who your business is and what services you provide. It should also act as the main hub of your website from which visitors can explore at their own pace — meaning, you should have links to all other important pages on your homepage. Last, but not least, your homepage should inform visitors as to how they can get in touch with you. landing page vs. homepage

What Is The Function Of A Landing Page?

Landing pages are pages that are specifically designed to receive traffic from specific sources. For example, if you run a PPC ad, users who click on that ad should be taken to a landing page. That landing page should be specifically designed for that particular ad. For example, if the ad is for a special discount on a specific product, your landing page should reflect that. If you send the user who clicked on that ad to your homepage instead, they would simply be confused. You’re basically forcing them to go on a search for the ad’s offer without any clear directions as to where to go.

Landing pages are created to stay focused on a single topic or offer and encourage visitors to take specific actions, such as filling out a form or downloading an offer, to name a couple of examples. A landing page shouldn’t have links to other pages unless they’re relevant to the action you want them to take. Adding irrelevant links to your landing page can distract visitors from what you want them to do.

Landing pages can be created for all kinds of marketing efforts, including not just PPC ads but also for different CTAs that you include in your blog posts. These landing pages may not be a permanent part of your website either.

Similar Article: 5 Types of Landing Pages To Increase Your Lead Conversion Rate

The Main Difference Between Landing Page Vs. Homepage

When it comes down to it, the homepage is an overview of your business that introduces visitors to your marketing funnel, whereas a landing page helps to convert visitors immediately by prompting specific actions. Although your homepage isn’t the end all be all of your website like it was during the early days of the Internet, it still plays an important part in your marketing efforts. However, it’s important to understand when it’s more appropriate to send visitors to a landing page instead of your homepage.

Inbound marketing will help you grow your business by attracting website visitors, converting them into leads and closing leads into customers

Using a Website Redesign Checklist

When it comes to redesigning your website, there are a lot of different elements you’ll need to address, which is why you should use a website redesign checklist. The following website redesign checklist will help you gather all of the data you need as well as address the most important aspects of your website’s design:

Analyze your current website

If you’ve committed to investing in a complete website redesign, then you probably know what you want to improve. However, you should use analytics to diagnose your site’s issues so that you know exactly what’s wrong. For example, if you’re visitor conversion rate is lower than you would like, look at data such as bounce rates, page load times, CTA click-throughs and shopping car abandonment rates to pinpoint where your issues lie. Other metrics you’ll want to pay attention to include:

  • SEO rankings for important keywords
  • Total number of sales generated
  • Number of visitors
  • Number of unique visitors
  • Domain authority
  • Number of new lead form submissions.

Establish your goals

If you don’t know what you want your website to accomplish, then you won’t know what direction to take your website redesign in. Without goals, you won’t know what to focus on, nor will you know whether your website redesign is successful once it’s up and running. Make sure that when you set your goals, you can tie them to measurable results. For example, if increasing your brand authority is your main goal, then track metrics such as:

  • The number of unique visitors,
  • Time spent on page
  • Social signals (shares, likes and comments)

Determine what works

Just because your current website might have a few issues doesn’t mean that there aren’t elements that work really well. For example, maybe you’re redesigning your site because you want to update its look; however, your content is actually very effective at drawing in visitors and capturing leads. More specifically, you’ll want to make sure that high ranking pages are kept in place. When auditing your site, take note of what you think is successful as well as what needs work.

Analyze your competitors

In addition to auditing your own website, you should audit the sites of your main competitors. Take note of everything you like and don’t like about their site. Your aim shouldn’t be to just copy what they do but to get an idea of what they are doing so that you can create a superior website experience.

Identify your UVP

Your unique value proposition (UVP) indicates exactly what your business does and what makes your services or products unique. A UVP helps you stand out from the competition. You need to know what your UVP is because it will inform all of the content that you create for your website.

Keep buyer personas in mind

Your website should appeal to your target audience. Your visitors need to be able to connect to your brand’s messaging, after all. To make sure that this happens, all of your content should cater to your buyer persona. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer created using the available data you have from current and past customers, such as:

  • Demographics
  • Past purchases
  • Online behavior
  • Motivations
  • Needs
  • Wants
  • Concerns
  • Personal histories
  • Income

Here are the reasons why buyer personas are so important to a business

Map your buyer’s journey

Every visitor that comes to your website is going to be at one of three stages of the buyer’s journey. The first stage is the awareness stage, in which the buyer is seeking information that helps to define their problems or needs. The second stage is the consideration stage in which the buyer defines their problem and is searching for solutions. The final stage is the decision stage, in which the buyer chooses a solution. Your website needs to cater to visitors at every stage of the buyer’s journey in order to attract their attention, keep their attention and, finally, to convert them.

Set benchmark metrics

The goals you set should be general yet measurable. For example, the goal to increase brand authority is a long-term goal that doesn’t end. Because of this, you should set benchmarks so that you can judge your site’s performance. For example, social signals are a good metric for measuring brand authority. You could set benchmarks for how many shares you want to average per blog post by a certain date. If your metrics meet this benchmark by this date, then you know that your redesign is working and you can set the goal posts even further. If you don’t meet this benchmark, then you may need to make more adjustments.

Optimize your site for SEO

Implementing a strong search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is vital to consistently attract new visitors. Google takes into account a variety of factors, including keywords, link juice and social signals. You’ll need to do keyword research to identify unique keywords relevant to each page. These keywords should be used naturally in your titles, headers, body content, anchor text, alt image tags, HTML tags, meta tags and title tags. External links are earned by promoting and linking to your website’s content via social media, submitting your website information to local directories and by writing guest blogs. Social signals are earned by getting visitors to engage with your content, such as by liking, sharing or commenting on it.

Optimize your site for mobile use 

Many people use their smartphones and tablets to browse the Internet. This means that your website will need to load and display properly no matter how small the screen size is. The easiest way to ensure that your site is mobile-friendly is by using a responsive design. You can check to see if your current site is mobile-friendly by using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Just type in the address for each webpage and it will determine how mobile-friendly it is.

Find opportunities for conversion

Calls-to-action should be used on every page to encourage visitors to convert. Without calls-to-action, visitors won’t know what you want them to do. Not only should you use relevant CTAs on every page, you need to offer something of value to visitors in return for opting-in. Depending on your what your business offers, this could include downloadable eBooks and white papers, email newsletter subscriptions, product discounts, free trials, free consultations and more. Unique landing pages should be crafted for every call-to-action that focus on the visitor’s needs, your UVP and how what you’re offering can benefit them.

Implement a content strategy

Whatever your goals are for your website, their success will depend on your content strategy. You need to provide high-quality content that is relevant to your buyer persona’s needs and concerns and that is informative, helpful and unique. The best way to do this is through a website blog. Additionally, you’ll need to regularly publish new content to keep your audience engaged and to make sure that they return to your site. While writing good content is important, you’ll need to market it as well. An important part of your content strategy is establishing exactly when you publish your content (it should always be on the same day at the same time) and where and how you promote your new content.

Continually improve

Don’t assume that once you’re done with your website redesign that you’re finished. A good website design is one that is always being improved. You should track your metrics and make adjustments to your design whenever needed. If you meet your goals, you should establish new ones. Move your goal posts further so that your website can continue to grow and improve. Additionally, you should always be uploading new content to keep your website fresh, thereby maintaining or improving your search engine rankings.

Want more resources on how to redesign your website? Click here!

  25 Website Must Haves For Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales