Is Your Website 2020 Ready? 6 Best Strategies When Updating Site

New year, newer website? Considering how rapidly the world of the web is progressing, it is only wise to make sure your website is at its best health. With billions of sites active, the competition is even stiffer these days. From the ‘race of the rank’ on search engines to ‘let the best user experience win’ – it is becoming tougher and one way to make sure you are on top of your site game is by frequent updates.

These frequent updates could be an addition of functionality or improvement of an existing one; or, it could be changing of primary keywords that your site targets. Really, the possibilities and room for improvement are always there. Why? Because of the changing web development trends to changing consumer demands that would keep your development and marketing team on its toes.

Of course, if you do not have a development team, you can always look up for software companies in Houston that are masters of their trade; which is web app development, maintenance, testing, and more.

Now we have all the necessary chit chat out of the way, let’s talk about the main strategies to keep in mind when updating your website. It is great to have a few pointers down as it makes the entire process of updating streamlined, productive, focused, and clear.

#1 Make sure everything is functioning properly

In other words, run a thorough audit of your site. Go through each page and check for any possible issues, errors, or improvement. In these times, building a website and leaving it as is, is no longer an option. So, what could be the issues you should be watching out for?

• Broken or poor quality images
• Broken links
• Outdated information/content
• Plugins that haven’t been updated or are no longer required
• Missing meta tags and descriptions
• Slow page load time
• Grammatical errors of any kind
• Bad formatting
• User-experience as a whole
• Search engine optimization

Sounds a lot, but it is worth it when it comes to your site’s performance. After all, an improved website will help your business and the people it caters to. So it is a win-win situation! Hence, invest.

#2 Carry Out A/B Testing

We talked briefly about staying on-trend, and one of the best ways to do that is through A/B testing. Why? Because not every trend or style will work for your audience.

What is A/B testing?

In the simplest of form, it can be defined as creating two versions of a webpage and comparing them against each other to check which performs better.

For example, let’s say you want to check whether a CTA button would work on the bottom of the page, or as a pop-up. You then would target both these variants to your audience that would see different versions when they visit your site. Whichever one gets the highest engagement rate is the one your audience prefers. This is a great way to test out new features; be it design or actual functionality.

A/B testing is a great way to prep your site for more revenue, traffic, and conversions. Once the site is tested for user preference and adjusted accordingly, you are bound to see positive results.

If you are running your site on WordPress or planning on getting it developed – either way, this popular CMS platform provides plenty of tools for you to carry out A/B testing.

#3 Check Analytics

Analytics play a great role in helping you understand the overall performance of your site with respect to the style of engagement it receives from the visitors. For example:

• How long users stay around on your site.
• Which web page seems to be the popular one.
• How well are the conversions or interactions with your CTAs and other important features.

So on and so forth.

Of course, our number one recommendation would be Google Analytics. So, add that to your WordPress site and keep track of the progress and areas of improvement. After all, user experience matters the most.

#4 Take User Feedback

Now that you are or have completed the process of updating your website and conducted A/B testing, it is time to get some real feedback. Your existing user/consumer-base is where you ask.

As much as websites need change to better their user experience, they still need real feedback in order to see if those updates are well-received or not. Moreover, you can directly ask those users through a survey about what they would expect from your site or the problems they may be facing. This will not only make them feel important but you will also get the necessary insight you require.

After all, you may not think or contemplate a certain feature, detail, or even catching an error as your users can. So run email campaigns, social media campaigns, or a survey – whatever works best with your audience.

#5 Renew Your Keywords

Keywords, when done right, help you in your rank in search engines. However, with time, you need to re-evaluate your keywords. When you first launched your site and the keywords you chose, may not be bringing you the audience or reach after some time.

Hence, it is best to keep your keyword research and planning up-to-date. You can use Google Keyword Planner as your main tool or KWFinder, which is a third-party tool.

Remember, with time, search phrases or keywords change and the ones that showed great volume at the start, may not be popular anymore. So, keep a look-out for the keywords that your site can rank for, and strategize around that.

#6 Update/Produce Content

Don’t just produce content but make sure you are aware of Google’s algorithms and your target audience’s preference before you curate one. Posting unique, informative, and relevant content boosts your google ranking and also helps in retaining users by keeping them interested.

Also, make sure the content being produced is search engine optimized as well. This is, not only that it is relevant to your site and audience but also contains a good amount of keywords (a bag of long-tail and others). This way, the search engine can learn more about your content and rank it accordingly.

Start a blog! And for that blog, devise a content strategy. Also, make sure, the web copy is also updated and optimized.

So far, these were the strategies you should keep in mind when updating your website. It is 2020, and the trends have since changed drastically. Make sure you are on top of your game to reap the benefits of an impressive rank, traffic, and conversions for your business.