5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Website

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As with anything when it comes to making a living, it would be nice if it were easy. But there is so much involved in marketing and presenting your business to the world. Regardless of your industry, as a business owner, you also have to be a salesperson and be able to express to your customers why they should buy your service or your product.

This is why so many businesses invest time, energy, and money into their website. Your website is your 24/7 salesperson and is your business hub of marketing. It’s where you present your brand, values, message, services, and where you hope to make a connection with your readers.

Is your website accomplishing those goals? If it’s not garnering the attention you would have hoped, it can be challenging to figure out where the problem is and how to fix it – short of a complete website redesign.

That is why I want to walk you through 5 easy places to start. They cover many areas of website creation including technical, design, and written aspects.

 

How to easily update and improve your website

 

1. Optimize images for fast loading

2. Keep branding consistent

3. Clear navigation and logical sitemap

4. Invest in Brand Phtography

5. Edit your copywriting

 

One thing to note when working on your website is that is always a good idea to make updates. Adding content, reading over and clarifying your offers, adding more Calls to Action… they are all going to improve your user experience and Google will see that you’ve made changes and will recrawl your site. So let’s get started!

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1. Boost performance by optimizing images

 

Slow-loading pages are a major turn-off for your website visitors. On most website builders, it should be easy to have a fast-loading page. However, if you are uploading large files like super high-quality photos, it will make a noticeable difference in page experience.

This doesn’t mean you can’t use those great photos! (In fact, our next point talks more about the importance of investing in Brand Photography.) You can use a website like tinypng.com to compress your photos so they aren’t so big without losing any quality.

 

 

The free version allows you to upload up to 20 images of a maximum of 5 MB each. Most photos you’ll want to use won’t be over 5 MB. But if you do need the extra compressing power, their paid version is quite affordable and lets you upload an unlimited number of files up to 75 MB (that’s massive!).

If you’re wondering if it’s worth it to compress and upload all of your photos again, take a look at TinyPNG’s website analyzer tool. It calculates total size savings and approximately how much faster it would make your website! Those seconds are huge when it comes to page speed. Page speed not only makes your user experience better but also is a factor in how Google ranks your page for search results.

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2. Consistent Branding

 

Now let’s step away from the technical side of things and talk about your overall website design. Consistent branding is essential for building a strong brand identity, establishing trust and credibility, improving user experience, and increasing brand recognition. By developing a cohesive branding strategy and implementing it consistently across all touchpoints, you can create a positive and memorable experience for your audience, which can lead to increased engagement, loyalty, and revenue.

Make sure your web pages are designed cohesively, using a minimal number of fonts and sticking to your brand’s visual design guidelines. Changing the design or style from page to page will confuse your website visitors and disengage them.

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Need help establishing your brand’s visual design and identity? Work with Key Creative and come away confident in your look and message.

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Some other things to keep in mind when in comes to overall website design is maintaing contrast between colours. You don’t want your background colour and text colour to be so contrasting that it blinds the reader. But the more common mistake is that when there is not enough contrast, also making it hard to read. I see this alot when using images as a background. If you want to use an image, make sure that your text is clearly legible on all screen sizes.

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3. Clear navigation and logical sitemap

 

There is a reason websites have multiple pages. We want to break up the information in a way that makes it easy to find and easy to process for the reader. In doing this, one must be careful to create your sitemap (pages and their organization) so each page serves a purpose.

One page you can get rid of right now is a Testimonial page. Instead, scatter these testimonials throughout your website so people read them more readily.

Another part of organizing pages is setting up your navigation. Websites often have two important menus: the main menu that appears at the top of every page and a footer menu that appears at the bottom of every page. The main menu needs to be quite concise. Avoid cramming every link into your header as this makes site navigation overwhelming and unattractive. If you have many pages, you can have some links dropdown to show more links. But another good practise is to only include your most important and most frequented pages in your main menu, but have additional links available in your footer. This way, pages like your FAQ, Privacy Policy, Referal Program are still accessible but don’t distract from more important pages.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to what is logical page organization and navigation. It’s a good idea to visit other websites and see what navigation and footer styles you enjoy navigating the most. You could also poll your social media audience on how they prefer your site.

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4. Invest in Brand Photography

 

There’s a reason websites aren’t just pages of words. Images play a critical part in the overall aesthetic and messaging of your brand. So it’s important that your website (and social media) photos are well thought-out and curated. Thes images help your audience associate your brand with speicifc visual elements, leading to increased brand recognition and recall.

So can you use camera roll or stock photos? It’s generally not a good idea. Because photos are so eye-catching, your website visitor will notice them; it may even be the first thing they notice. Make sure your photos are high-quality and unique. Stock photos are not unique to your brand and may be seen on other brand’s websites that may be promoting very different services.

For this reason, we always recommend our web design clients work with a Brand Photographer before we begin their project. The images are guaranteed to be unique to you, convey your brand’s personality, and help you be consistent across all platforms.

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To help our clients achieve this goal, we’ve partnered with Kinsey Holt Photography to offer an exclusive discount on Brand Photography sessions for our clients. Having done our last 3 brand shoots, we can say, from experience, that Kinsey makes the prep, session, and delivery of professional business photos a breeze! It would be impossible to continue our calibre of marketing without her great photos.

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If you are ready to level up your website design, make sure to reach out to Kinsey Holt Photography (and mention your Key Creative project for an exclusive discount 😍). Just take a peak below at some of the great work she has done for us!

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5. Edit your website copy (so it hits home!)

 

Writing copy for your own website is often a huge task. This is why we handle all copywriting for our website projects. Having this step done for you saves so much time and stress about what to say. However, if you are writing it yourself here are some things to consider.

While you do need to present and explain your offers, business, and unique positioning, you need to be careful not to make it all about you. In fact, most of your copy should focus on your reader and their specific problems. When you do mention your service or product it should be to explain how it will solve their problem, make their life easier, or some other transformation.

Don’t be afraid to use second person pronouns like you and your. Emphasize the fact that you understand your ideal customer by writing about their struggles and their dreams. When your website visitors read your copy and it feels like it was written just for them… well, that’s when they decide to buy from you.

A second thing to consider is being concise and breaking up the text, visually. Use small paragraphs, lists, and visual hierarchy wherever possible. This will help the eye of your reader to be drawn to important headlines and points of interest. If you don’t break up large areas of text, your readers will simply skip it.

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In Conclusion

 

In conclusion, improving your website is a crucial step in building a strong online presence and attracting more visitors. By implementing the tips discussed in this blog post, such as improving site speed, optimizing images, and making navigation user-friendly, you can enhance the user experience and increase engagement on your site. Remember that your website is often the first impression that potential customers have of your brand, so investing time and effort into improving it can pay off in the long run. With these easy-to-implement techniques, you can take your website to the next level and achieve your online goals.

 

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Ready for a professionally designed, written, and developed website?

Fill out our client application form and we will get back to you within 48 hours to schedule a meeting to talk about your website goals. We look forward to hearing from you!

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Thanks for reading! Feel free to share to your preferred social media sites.

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