How to Make Your Website Work for You

We recently overhauled the Jenn David Design website and it reinforced the importance of this essential marketing tool for any business. Not surprisingly, the project grew larger than we originally intended as we got some great ideas along the way that we wanted to incorporate. I’m happy to say it’s everything I wanted for our site and it’s finally done!

But of course you don’t just publish a website and let it sit there. You need to keep it fresh and alive, otherwise it goes stale quickly and looks dated. What does it mean to keep your website fresh and alive? For one, you want to make it work for you. You need to put effort into keeping it updated regularly but you also want it to do the heavy-lifting on its own: attract new users and get them to take specific actions, and be SEO-rich to keep the search engines happy (which in turn keeps you happy).

So how do you make your website work for you?

1. Offer something of value. When people come to your site, give them value. I wanted people to get an idea of what it’s like to work with us, so we have a free guide “How to Make Your Gourmet/Specialty Brand Rock”—you can access it here. Would love to hear your thoughts and how it works for you! If you submit it back to us we offer a complimentary 30-minute workshop session for new prospects. How can you interact with your audience? What is some value you can give them?
2. Regular updates, This can be blog posts, news, press, new work—whatever is of value to your audience. The key is regularity. The more you do it, the easier it is. It does not have to be anything major each time you do these updates.
3. Keep up-to-date with technology. This does not mean following the latest trend. Trends are not always appropriate to everyone and if many others are doing it, you don’t stand out if you follow suit. You do however want to keep your site up to par with the latest technological advances such as making your site responsive so it automatically optimizes for different screen sizes (desktop, mobiles and tablets). With mobile usage increasing significantly, it’s essential to have a website that works on mobiles. Is your site not yet responsive? Let’s talk.
4. Calls to action. Make sure you guide your web audience to take the specific actions that you desire them to take while on your website. Remember that most website visits last just a couple minutes or less and most users are multitasking so you need to make sure that you attract, inform and engage in a succinct manner.
5. Usability. It should go without saying: make your website easy for the user. Make it easy for them to quickly find what they need. Don’t sacrifice usability for appearance or the latest trend.

Thoughts on our new site? Leave a comment below!