One can only imagine how hard it is to achieve success on the web. Business owners endlessly grind for traffic by collecting backlinks, creating content, shoving in keywords, designing the best visuals and functionality, and much more!
Of course, all the hassle pays off in the end. A successful website makes the sales team as busy, as they can get. But what if I told you that you can wake up one beautiful morning, check on how your website is doing and find nothing but disastrous analytics?
What happened? Was it the market competition? Have the trends suddenly shifted? Maybe, it’s both? In this article, we will showcase 10 reasons why your website may suddenly lose traffic. Although any of them may be simply eliminated with a couple of website updates.
Updating the visual appeal of your website
1. Outdated design and/or functionality
The most obvious reason to update your website is, of course, your website’s design. It almost comes as granted to update the look and feel of your pages.
The layout and functionality of your website’s design are crucial, though. It’s a known fact that it just takes 50 milliseconds to form an opinion of a web page by looking at it. And if it has a long loading time, you better be lucky, because that’s already not a great first impression.
Going back to the design, you should reconsider how your pages look ever so often (every 2-5 years actually). To decide what changes have to be implemented, survey your target audience, analyze heatmaps and competitors. You can do all the work or conduct all the research, but it is usually much more efficient to hire a professional agency.
2. Eye-soaring stock photos
Corporate stock images have lost their purpose. This kind of photo is usually conceived as corny, unnatural, and highly annoying due to its repetitive nature. And your website probably displays some of them.
We don’t mean to label all of the stock photos out there as unusable, but it’s more likely for a stock image to hurt your page’s aesthetic, than not. To experience the level of “corny” we are talking about, google something like “CEO stock image” and you will get the goofiest results.
Moreover, stock images have become an Internet joke (a meme) used by Millenials. So better check your visuals, if you want to be taken seriously.
We strongly suggest switching from photos to digital art. It’s more colorful, fun, and expressive. What’s not to like?
1. Engaging Motion and Animation
Just think it over: what can encourage a person to browse your website besides products and services? The answer might not be the most obvious. It’s an engaging animation. If a cleverly positioned video can pump your conversion rate by 9%, imagine what a cartoon can do.
Some websites can really mesmerize their users. Joyful animations push users a little more towards hanging on and exploring without pulling their attention away from the actual content on the page.
It’s also a great way to differentiate from your competitors. Truly one of the leading website trends for today. Update your website by adding more animations and show your users that you care about their experience.
Making a step-up in your website’s promotion strategy
2. Implementing or updating your SEO
If you worry about the future relevance of your website, it means that you have probably achieved success online, which is basically impossible without SEO. But what if we told you that the way SEO works also changes drastically from time to time?
Conduct professional SEO audits to reassure the relevancy of your SEO efforts. The way you optimize your content will have to change along with the way search engines perceive it.
If your audit has conducted flaws, it can all be easily corrected on the back end of your CMS.
1. Switching up your content strategy
After mentioning SEO it only comes as logical to talk about content marketing. If you are not familiar with this strategy, content marketing is a great way to gain authority by answering the questions of your target audience in blog articles. One of the website trends, that is basically mandatory to be at least somewhat efficient online.
Content marketing is also a great way to one-up your searchability. But in order to gain traction, you will have to continually research your audience’s problems. Don’t forget to take a peek at what your competitors have posted. Maybe some of their content is outdated. Steal their traffic by providing more relevant information.
2. Updating your existing content
While analyzing your competitors, it’s important to find a moment for self-reflection. Don’t forget about the content audit to find and target outdated content in your own blog.
By doing that you won’t give anyone a chance to outperform your blog and snitch your traffic away. Outdated content is also bad for your SEO, so take it seriously. Content revisions have to be one of the most frequent website updates.
Website updates that transform your sales
3. Implementing strategic CTA’s
The CTA (call to action) button is literally a trigger, which creates conversions. “Subscribe”, “Schedule a call”, “Add to cart”- all these are CTA’s.
Essentially, it doesn’t take a lot to put a “Buy” button just near the product’s image to sell the product. But what about lead generation? Where should you put your CTA’s to acquire leads? At the beginning of your article/landing page? In the end? In the middle?
Simply placing a CTA requires a great deal of thought process. Long story short, there has to be a logical sequence that leads to the action. You discover where to put your CTA’s by experimenting and looking at the heatmaps of your website.
1. Offering lead magnets that bring actual value
While conducting your content audit, don’t forget to check the downloadable pieces. If you don’t have any, it’s about time to add some.
These are called lead magnets, free educational content, that brings leads to your CRM. To develop a bomb of a lead magnet you will have to put yourself into the shoes of your target audience. Brainstorm the most efficient problemsolvers, that can be easily digitally distributed.
For example, a website about photography can share cheat sheets that help to determine the right exposure at any given situation. A beginner photographer will sweep them away with no second thought.
2. Don’t ever forget about A/B testing
Have you ever found yourself in a position where there is not one but two great decisions you can make? Or even more. How to pick one and move forward with no regret about abandoning the other? Well, pick both.
Website updates usually confront people with difficult cases of decision making. Any experienced strategist will suggest you test all the best solutions in practice. That is called A/B testing. Many CMS’s and CRM’s allow its users to easily conduct A/B testing and find out the best solution at the given time.
A/B testing can also determine the best decision regarding CTA positioning. Don’t ever guess the best solution for your business. Testing it out first won’t cost you much.
1. Don’t be afraid to switch your CMS
Content Management Systems are considered mandatory in most cases. It’s basically an operating system for your website’s back end. And it’s functionality can definitely be a reason to update your website.
While picking a new CMS, your priority should be to choose the one, that is both easy to use and functional. Make sure that your colleges understand it on the same level as you. Consider your content strategy and think of any possible way you can enhance it with an update.
Although transferring all of your content to the new CMS might be tricky, it’s worth the hassle. To do so people usually manually copy and paste everything into the new system. Make sure to read the manual that might ease the whole process.
So are you up for an update?
It’s never too late to step up and move on with a new version of your website, no matter how old and rust it can be now. Now you know why is it necessary to continue to maintain and improve an existing web site and have all the needed information to actually update by yourself.
But in case you need to optimize the whole process and add a professional touch to it, we are always ready to help you out!