Is your website built for the long haul? We meet with companies every week that have an outdated website. Many of them don’t realize the impact that this is having on their business.
Have you ever conducted online research on a company that you are considering for a project or service? We all have. In fact, we do it almost every day. Performing key word searches and finding products and services online is a way of life today. Many businesses that we engage day to day here at NEXTFLY have websites that were developed a decade ago, sometimes more. The unfortunate part for most companies is that they don’t realize that their old website is driving away business. General consumers along with businesses looking to engage a company are expecting to be impressed by your website. An old looking business website is considered a red flag and is definitely not doing your business any favors.
Here are some key questions to ask when updating your company’s website –
Is it pretty? Having clean, high-resolution imagery on your business website is a must. Many times you visit a site only to see blurry old pictures with low-pixel quality that look very outdated. We here at NEXTFLY have access to libraries containing millions of royalty free, high-resolution images for your website. Be sure the company you hire is not borrowing stock imagery from the Internet. Images online are often owned by someone else and having those images on your site could be considered copyright infringement. NEXTFLY will also visit your business and take high-resolution photos of your business and team to include on your website. This often gives your business a very personal touch.
Is it easy to navigate? Often times we see business websites with home pages that are cluttered with information and content. The main problem with this is that you are overloading the viewer with information. The home page is too busy. The result of this is that most people won’t read any of it. It looks like too much work to research and they pass on reading all together. NEXTFLY puts a huge focus on a clean, easy to read home page with paths that lead to the information the viewer is looking for. If they want to read more about a certain subject, they can easily dive deeper with a single click. Once a viewer has shown interest in a certain product or service, there will be more links for them to follow to go even deeper into your companies products or services related to the avenue they selected.
Is there a call to action? Many websites offer a great deal of reading material for the viewer. One of the keys that is lost sometimes is the “call to action”. Once you have impressed the viewing public with your attractive website, it is crucial that you encourage them to reach out to you. Whether they are viewing the website via computer, tablet or mobile. They should always be just one click away from reaching out to you. They should easily be able to provide you with their information or in the case of mobile, click a button that dials directly into your office. This key factor alone generates new leads each week for hundreds of our clients.
Does it load quickly? We often get companies that want video as the header of their homepage. While this is very possible and we will provide that service, we often advise against it. The reason is that video often takes longer to load on certain computers and web browsers. In addition, Internet connection speed can play a big part in this. Having a slow load time will often increase the bounce rate of your website. Bounce rate is the measurement of how many visitors your website had that left almost instantly. People usually won’t wait around for a video home page to load. If you want to include a video for your viewers, we usually recommend an imbedded video on your homepage that viewers can then click to watch. When it comes to the header of your website, stick with the high-resolution imagery.
Is my website easy to find? Even the most beautiful websites are almost completely useless without good search engine optimization of your content. If people are searching for your products or services in their area, are you showing up on that list? Here at NEXTFLY we ensure that your on-site content is optimized for all major search engines. We then submit each page to be crawled by these engines to ensure that your content is protected and recognized. We also offer ongoing services to work within your content management system to help you attain and retain your desired status on all major search engines. If you prefer to load ongoing data to your website in-house, we will train you on the best methods for success. This training is automatically included with every website we sell.
