With the hustle and bustle of the holiday season behind us and the interruptions of Covid restrictions etc. You might be holding a to-do list for your business which seems to never end, or you feel completely overwhelmed.
Within the chaos it becomes easy to forget about the long-term goals for your business’ website and how this should be aligned with your business goals. In order to remain visible and receive more organic free traffic, there are a few things you need to do throughout the next 90 days, to get things back on track.
Things you can do to start in order to make improvements to build online presence for your business and regain website visibility with your ideal customers is to first conduct a quick benchmark audit, secondly, figure out a 90-day business goal you would like to use your website to help with and finally undertake a grunt test for your website.
1. Conduct a simple website audit
In your first week of winning back your website visibility, it is time to take stock of the current situation. You will need access to your website data from your Google Analytics or tracking software you use to monitor your website. To keep it simple, we want to find 4 pieces of information to track down to develop a baseline going forward. Collection of information should take less than 30 mins if you have access to the resources.
Things to collect about your website’s traffic
- What are the Visitor numbers over the last 30 days?
- What are the top pages your visitors are visiting?
- How many leads / enquiries / sales has your website generated in the last 30 days?
- What are your top search keywords for your website?
Resources you will need for a simple website audit.
- Google Analytics Report (Visitor Numbers, Top Pages)
- Google Console OR SEO MOZ ( Find top keywords for your website)
- Access to your CRM or leads, collection forms to count leads, enquiries or sales.
- Spreadsheet or Document to record the audit benchmarks.
Now that we have collected the information required, and we have general picture of the current situation, it’s time to start thinking about what those business plans and goals are for the next 12 months and beyond.
2. What’s the 90-day goal for your business?
Do you have a 90 day or 13 week goal for your business you would like to achieve? Does or can your website play a part in your business objectives. Below are some ideas on ways to leverage a website to align with the types of goals a business might have. We always suggest just picking one thing you want to achieve. Less is more. Plus having one keeps the focus on tweaking and adjusting till you get it right.
- Build an email database of visitors you can market and communicate with, to build a relationship with the right customers. (Sales, Marketing)
- Improve customer support with online chat or ticket systems, to reduce wait times on the phone. (Customer Service)
- Increase Sales by 20% by offering cart bump offers. (Sales)
- Increase organic traffic to your website by an extra 30% with crafted blogs or articles. (Sales, Marketing)
- Educate and build awareness by using video on your website which can be used for social media reach (Vet might do a how to check your dog for ticks, a plumber might show how to replace a washer on a tap) (Marketing)
- Create a paid membership area for customers to access special content to build subscription revenue for the business. (Sales)
- Find the right customers for your business, by getting new testimonials from your preferred customers. (Customer Service, Sales)
- Qualifying customer enquiries better with a simple targeted enquiry form process (Customer Service)
These ideas might sound simple, some are easy to set up and running. Others may require a bit of planning and set up on your website. The goal is to pick one and work with one thing your website can help with carry the load for your business and its objectives.
“ Pick one thing to focus on for the next 90 days, which aligns with a business goal you would like to achieve.”
3. Take a GRUNT TEST TO improve your website’s visibility.
One of the biggest factors many business owners will do time and time again. “Oh, just add it to the website”, “can we put this on the home page”. Then, very quickly, your beautiful website can become confusing and start to look like a Jackson Pollock artwork, and the message will be lost, and your visitors will be confused about what they need to do.
So it’s time to get a caveman in to review your website and see if is they can understand what your business is about in less than a few seconds from visiting your website. What you don’t want is people visiting your website and clicking back, or closing the browser quickly because your messages have left your visitors confused. It really sends the wrong signals to Google.
To conduct the Grunt test on your or other websites, go view a website for FIVE seconds then close the tab, screen, or laptop and then ask the following questions:
1. What does the website or business offer?
2. How will it make your life better? Or, does it solve a problem you have?
3. What do you need to do to book, sign up, buy or get started?
If your website visitors can’t answer the above 3 questions after 6 seconds, you may have a website visibility problem, and you could be losing customers. They are unclear on what you offer and how to take action on your website.
People’s short attention spans are making it harder to build conversion on your website. If they can’t figure out what you do quickly they will leave your website and move onto the next search result in Google.
Summary
So in order to get help build your online presence over the next 12 months, it’s time to focus on taking stock of the current situation of your website, pick out a goal or plan for your website to go forward with and then take a quick grunt test which will help to show up if your language and copy is aligned to your business. As you make improvements to your website over 90 days, don’t forget to track your progress by recording your traffic results every 30 days.
