5 Website Items To Review And Revise For A Successful 2016

The New Year is here, and it’s time to make a website action plan for 2016. Taking the time to address key parts of a business website is vital to ensure you’re successful with bigger results down the road.

Technology moves fast, and to stay competitive, websites need to keep up with the latest standards. Here are 5 items to put at the top of 2016’s website New Year’s resolution list:

1. Is the website responsive? If it is not, it needs to be now! With more people than ever accessing the web through their mobile devices, a responsive website is a top priority for businesses. If a site is not easy to navigate on a tablet or phone, you will lose viewers and sales. Responsiveness is also now a key factor in a website’s SEO as well. To rank in the search engines, a website must be mobile-friendly.

2. Create a powerful lead generating area. A website cannot effectively sell a product or service if visitors can’t find where to buy or sign up. Place your call-to-action in a very visible place. Above the fold, on the product page works well. Use whitespace to make it pop, visually. If you use a button, use colors that will draw attention and encourage clicks. Make sure that you have a clear lead-in that informs the customer of what they’re buying or signing up for. Lead capture is critical to your overall online marketing success.

3. Content is still the king of websites. To keep up with demand, while delivering quality and value to customers, businesses should come up with a content plan. By taking the time to plan articles ahead, businesses can tell branding stories, conduct research and evaluate which content will best serve their customers. With content prepared ahead of time, posting times can be planned to target when a business’s key demographic is online and looking for new content.

4. Social media is one of the best forms of promotion that Web content has. If a website doesn’t have social sharing buttons that make it simple for visitors to share content, a huge opportunity is being wasted. Adding buttons, allowing sharing on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest can instantly give a site a boost with very little cost.

5. Website images need to be optimized for sharing as well. This means preparing photos for the Web, high-quality images that are optimized for the web. This also means choosing and creating images that visitors will want to share. This can be beauty or humor or information, but it must give visitors a reason to share. An infographic with valuable facts, a beautiful shot of a product in action, a bit of industry humor can all be good choices.

2016 is here! Stay up-to-date on important trends to set up a successful year. It will take work, but if you act on this list, you’ll see a significant improvement to your online marketing in the new year.