So you launched a beautiful new website – congratulations! You’ve just empowered your company with an incredible tool for increasing engagement and brand awareness. You should be proud, but don’t fully relax just yet – your website project isn’t complete! In fact, your website should always be a work in progress, evolving and advancing over time. Sometimes marketers make the mistake of thinking of a website as a one and done project, but the truth is great websites require continuous thought and care.
Why Your Website Should Always Be Changing
To keep visitors coming back
A brand’s website is one of its most powerful communication touch points. If you’d like to communicate something new to consumers, you should ask yourself how you can do so through your website. If you’re launching a new promotion, you should have information and calls to action that describe the promotion on the homepage. Are you releasing a new product? Update your site to keep people informed.
At a minimum, it’s a good idea to update the homepage of your website at least once per month to ensure that web visitors feel they are getting a new experience each time they visit. This will encourage people to return to your site regularly, because they know they can expect new information they didn’t receive during their last visit.
To make your website last longer
A complete redesign of a website is a big investment of both time and budget. And if you haven’t evolved your website over the last three years, there’s a chance it’s already outdated. By changing smaller parts of your website regularly – like photos, videos, and refreshed copy – you can keep your website looking fresh for longer and prevent yourself from needing to completely overhaul it every 3-5 years. You can make the act of updating your website more digestible by creating phases based on website traffic. Update the most visited pages first – the homepage, product pages, and other pages that people visit more than a few times per month. Then, update other secondary pages, and consider adding new pages for content your audience craves the most. Keep your website updates frequent and consistent to make your investment last the longest.
To give the people more of what they want
Just as you would with any other marketing asset, you should always measure and analyze the success of your website. Which pages perform the best? Which pages are best optimized for search engines? And which pages do people bounce from quickly? Using measurement tools like Google Analytics and Hubspot, you can determine what’s working on your website – and what’s not. If you notice certain pages have high bounce rates or if pages aren’t getting many views at all, you should revisit the pages and update the content or design to ensure a better experience for your website visitors. Respond to your website analytics by adding more of what people want and less of what they don’t – as a result, you’ll find your website retaining attention and influencing brand advocacy.
To speak to the right audience
Let’s say your website is 3 years old. Are you targeting the same group of people you chose to reach years ago, or has your marketing strategy evolved and introduced you to new target audiences? Fresh produce marketers should look to achieve a healthy balance of content for trade and consumer audiences alike, and strive to keep this content updated regularly. Ensure your website is working on your behalf by changing it as your brand’s goals change.
Don’t neglect your website and allow it to become outdated after just a few years. Instead, sustain your website investment by regularly updating pieces of your site. Whether you change the header image on your homepage or switch up the copy on your product pages, you’ll bring new life to your website by making small, frequent strategic changes. Want to know more about how to improve your website? Download our free guide to building a better website to learn how to keep your website producing on your behalf.
