A website should never be stagnant. Nor should it ever be coined complete. With so many different methods to gather data and analyze a website, testing and improving seems only natural. If your website isn’t being updated or modified on a regular basis, it won’t be nearly as successful as if it were. Adding fresh content to a website, changing featured photos and callouts and building relevant landing pages can drastically boost the quality of the interactions you have with your visitors. If you visit a website that never updates anything, you are more than likely not going to return in the future. Give your visitors a reason to come back. What valuable content and insights can you offer your users? How can you go that extra mile to improve their life based on the nature of your business?
Fresh Content, Regularly
Having a content management system gives you so many advantages. If you don’t use it to regularly update your website, you are defeating the purpose of having one altogether.
Blogs & News
One of the best ways to bring more content to your site is to have a blog. Sharing your expert knowledge can be a great way to add content and provide additional value on your website. If you are e-commerce shop, offer relevant stories that combine the use of your product in your reader’s daily lives. Provide them with the hows and whys of owning your products. Always aim to solve problems. Stay current with your blog and news section. Is there something happening in the world that relates to what you are offering your clients? Write about it. This is a short term solution to bring a few extra visitors to your website. Hot topics are often more highly searched by those who hear about it down the grapevine and want to learn more. For example, responsive design has been at the forefront of the web design world for a few years now. When it first was brought to my attention at a design conference, I used my blog to do the research and provide my readers with the knowledge I had gained at the conference. Not only was this a fairly current topic, it was also highly sought after by those looking for a better solution to mobile websites.
Events
Similar to blogs & news, having a calendar of events is a great way to include fresh content on your website. It’s important to callout events throughout the website so users come across them, even if they aren’t necessarily looking for them. An event calendar acts as a blog if setup correctly. Using a listing style of calendar, rather than a traditional wall-calendar layout can provide a few benefits. For one, they are easier to scan. You can also fit more information into a listing than in a tiny little square on a traditional calendar. Providing a little detail next to each event allows the visitor to be intrigued and can peak their interest in the event. Visitors who may be interested in your events need some type of notification to get them interested. Give them a sneak peek of the event via email or even a printed newsletter. Providing only a few details will give them a reason to check back on your website. Another excellent notification system is an event feed that your users can sign-up for. This gives them a good reason to investigate a little more on your website each time you have a new event.
Website Landing Pages
A landing page is a single page on your website setup for one particular purpose. It many times isn’t accessible from the main navigation and may only be a temporary page. Let’s say you are an active Facebook user and you are offering a special sneak peek of a new product or service you are offering. A landing page is a great solution for this scenario. You can build a special page for that product that only is visible to a certain group. A bonus for those who like you on Facebook. Giving your visitors reasons to engage with you on social media is key. It also drives them to your website in this case—because you have new content that offers them value.
Make your visitors feel special for going the extra mile and engaging with you.
Featured Callout Areas
An excellent way to let your customers know you have new content is to include featured callout areas throughout your site. If you have an event calendar, feature some of your upcoming events on the homepage or where they may be of interest to new visitors. They may not be looking for them initially, but they could intrigue them to attend if they capture their attention. Write a new blog post lately? Let your visitors know. Social media channels are a great way to get the word out about a new post. It’s a great way to pull your visitors into your website. Remember, you don’t want to distract your customers from your end goal by sending them from a key page to your blog. You want your blog to act as interesting bait to get them to view you as a knowledgable, interesting source of content and service. This is why I don’t often recommend having blog post snippets throughout the website like you would an event or news piece. Unless it’s part of the goal you want to achieve, don’t drive your customers there.
Photos & Graphics
You don’t need to go through an entire re-design to refresh your website. Simply changing out some of the featured images and graphics throughout your site can make it feel fresh and revived. Doing this every few weeks can peek interest and allow returning visitors to explore other parts of your website they may not have explored. Graphics and photography allow you to highlight a certain page or element on your website. Change them regularly along with the content in your featured callout areas. Generally people aren’t attracted to large blocks of text. Keep it simple.
Website Testing Tools
Looking to make a few changes to your website? A full redesign isn’t always necessary. Once you are happy with your website, test and keep a close eye on your analytics. Move around some page elements that may not be performing well. Try changing the colors of your buttons and callouts if nobody is clicking on them. Crazy Egg is a great tool to see where your visitors are clicking on some of your key pages. One of their key offerings is a heat map to show where the majority of your users are clicking on the page. It also showcases how far down the page they are scrolling if you are concerned with long pages. Making design decisions based on hard facts is a smart way to justify changes on your website. Certain things may not work for your site, whereas they make work well for someone else. It all depends on your visitors and how they are using your website.
Engage, Provide Value & Refresh
There are many ways you can engage your visitors with fresh content. Just make sure what you are providing them with is valuable and can solve their everyday problems. With any successful business, the goal is to always solve a problem.
