First impressions are everything. From first dates, to business partnerships, they often make or break what comes next. In this digital age, the first place anyone goes to learn more about a business online is their website. While we utilize websites and social profiles to paint a larger picture of who we are, it is the interfaces’ design that speaks the loudest. Studies have shown that visitors will judge your website within 50 milliseconds of clicking its URL. If your website isn’t user-friendly, customized, or has too much for the eyes to concentrate on, you have dramatically decreased the ability to sell your service —all in the blink of an eye. From keeping up with digital modernization, to correctly selling to your consumer, there’s much to consider during a website refresh or redesign.
Let’s use Konnect’s recent website refresh as a reference to navigate the discussion of leveraging your website to better position your business for success.
Website Building Blocks to Consider
It can be hard to decipher when exactly you need to update your website if you’re considering a refresh as opposed to a full-blown redesign. A good rule of thumb is to follow the timeline that an individual buys a new smartphone – every 1.5 to two years. User design and modernization are key. If your website is taking forever to load, has confusing navigation or unclear calls to action, chances are they won’t be excited to return — and therefore it’s worth the investment to change their mind. When considering a refresh, here are the top updates to consider. Consider a SWOT analysis with your team to see where your weaknesses and opportunities lie to figure out the missing pieces to tackle in a website re-fresh.
- Are you user-friendly? Being desktop friendly and mobile friendly is a must. The reason consumers like browsing websites on mobile, outside of convenience, is the simple design. Konnect’s website refresh focused on storytelling through simplicity. Users who visit can piece together our brand story by simply scrolling from the top of the webpage to the bottom— no pages to bury yourself in that might result in the loss of critical information. The “Konnect with us” plus sign leads to a slider page that takes the consumer to our three main calls to action. Since our brand refresh in May, Konnect has seen +125.28% increase in session duration on the website, 38% of that coming from mobile.
- What is your consumer’s CTA? For a successful call to action, there needs to be a clear path to your ask. While this seems commonplace, button placement and accessibility is everything. If you’re a shoppable site, is your “add to cart” button in an easy to reach spot on the screen? For websites with more than one call to action, the use of a slide out page where individuals can submit or request additional information is a helpful way to introduce your brand’s ask. Konnect’s primary calls to action speak to two different consumers: brands who are looking for a marketing agency, and professionals looking to join the team. For that reason, the slider page easily directs you to your CTA; you either upload your resume to work with us, or choose the services you’re interested in learning more about. From there, it’s on us to handle the rest.
- Are you searchable? One of the biggest benefits of a SWOT analysis is filling any holes in your searchability. If you’re going to refresh your website with modern design principles, you better have an SEO strategy in place to ensure you’ll be found by the right customers. If a user types “Web Development Agency” or any phrase for that matter, into Google, 75% of them won’t even click to the second page of search results. Clearly defining your services, buzz words within your industry and using them consistently across your website and other active platforms (Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc) will all help increase your sales funnel organically, as will a concise URL, and improving your page loading speed. In fact, your page load time is critical to holding folks’ interest. If your pages take more than three seconds to load, you’ll lose about 40% of consumers.
- What’s Your Story? While an “About Us” page does the trick, it can feel stuffy and outdated. What “peeks” into company culture, or nods to your origin story can you weave into a larger narrative at play on your website? Through the use of interactive elements, infographics, and imagery— show the consumer who you are and what you do rather than telling them. Testimonials and influencer content can also be a great third-party validation tool to showcase if conducive and you have the usage rights to do so.
Analyzing Your Refresh
So now you have a new website. Like all things, we must measure to understand if these changes are working for us. Measuring your website’s bounce rate, increase/decrease in overall sessions, which pages your users are most active on and continue to make any necessary changes to ensure you’re meeting goals. As Konnect continues to hire for a variety of positions, a measurement we’ve been tracking is the number of page views, and the careers page is the second most-visited page, closely following the homepage. A great way to continue that momentum is to share across social platforms, with all that cross promotion leading to the same page to continue propelling engagement forward.
By way of habit, make it a goal to have your teams review your website on a yearly basis and remove outdated information, and ensure your page loading speeds are conducive to the consumer. If you’re interested in a website refresh, Konnect with us to learn how our web development team can create a modern, fresh design to meet your business goals.