It’s the start of a new year and there are probably a lot of things already on your wish list that you’re hoping to improve or introduce to your marketing program in 2023. We want to encourage you to put your website at the top of that list. If a full overhaul is not in the budget this year, we have five recommendations for improving the user experience on your website with minimal expense.

Give Your Website a Cost-Effective Update Without a Big Budget

1. Fix What’s Broken

Sometimes the simplest updates are the most overlooked and undervalued. Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes and do a page-by-page walkthrough of your website – checking every link to make sure none are broken, comparing browser performance in Chrome and Firefox (the top two most used web browsers) to make sure your page layouts are identical in both, and then also in Safari to make sure the mobile user experience is the most efficient it can be. If you’ve not done a detailed walkthrough since you launched your website, you might be surprised how many little things need to be fixed.

2. Freshen up Team Photos and Other Imagery

Websites are susceptible to one of two things on team pages: they are completely forgotten about and never updated when employees come and go or change job titles OR if the team stays intact for a number of years, headshots are never updated. New photography is a simple way to keep your team page looking fresh. And on that note, when a complete website refresh isn’t in the budget, a cost-effective alternative is to update field and lifestyle imagery on your website – especially when they are high profile like in page headers. Whether stock imagery or proprietary photos, you can quickly swap out imagery to give your pages a simple facelift.

Interested in building up your own photo library? We can help! Click here to see examples of our photography work.

3. Look for Opportunities to Provide a Call to Action

Research shows that people will respond to direct calls to action and often won’t act unless they’re challenged to do so. This means that your website visitors are less likely to engage unless you boldly invite them to do so. Look for areas of your website where you can directly spur an action. Maybe it’s turning a passive suggestion to contact a salesperson into a bold CTA invitation to “CONTACT SALES TODAY.” Maybe it’s linking to your store locator in more than one place with a “FIND IN A STORE NEAR YOU” button. Odds are, there are many areas of your website that exist because you want your visitors to know and respond in some way. So, identify the most important things and make those engagement opportunities harder to miss.

4. Add/Update Social Sharing Buttons

Web users are very accustomed to finding social links in the header and/or footer of a website and will assume that you don’t have a social presence if those links are not available. If you have invested in the time to create content for those communities, make sure your website visitors can easily access them from your website. Conversely, do not leave an inactive social feed up on your website with the most recent posts being several months or even years ago. It is a quick and easy fix for your web support team to take care of both of these things.

5. Edit Down Lengthy Copy

We are big fans of strong storytelling on websites, but strong storytelling does not always equate to more words – especially when the story is in paragraph form. You have limited time to grab your reader’s attention and create a connection, so brevity is your friend. Consider tackling a wordy webpage a week, and integrate more clear, bold headings, transition to bullets when possible, and lead with the most important information you want to convey first.

Here’s some copywriting tips we shared from “Everybody Writes” by Ann Handley.

If all these suggestions feel beyond what you have the time and experience to handle on your own, our team can tackle it for you. In fact, we offer a Website Audit service that provides you with the detailed recommendations noted above and more! Fill out the form on this page and let us know you’re interested in learning more.