5 things to help you get the best from your website

It’s easy to forget about information that you display on your website. Articles, key members of staff, phone and email addresses, trading hours, pricing and special offers – all of which can become quickly out of date. It’s really important if you write blogs and articles, that these are kept up to date. If a visitor sees the latest blog is months old, it can make them feel that the site itself may not be up to date and they can lose trust in it. Keeping things fresh is also good for SEO, so set aside some dedicated time each month for a website content audit.

Just having a website is not enough, you need to actively drive traffic to it. Use good quality, relevant content through all communication channels and ensure that visiting your website is a clear next step for the customer. Remember that social media provides a one-click journey to your website, so optimise these channels with regular, well thought through posts, stories, reels and video which will inform, educate and entertain your target customer.

Understanding how your website is used can give you some key insights into what is working and what isn’t. Analytical tools such as Google Analytics show aggregated data giving you an understanding of where website traffic comes from, the pages that are landed on, pages most exited from and the top-ranking pages. Looking at this data regularly will help you to piece together an understanding of how effective your communication strategy is at driving traffic to your site as well as patterns in user behaviour e.g. if there is a certain page where people exit – is there a problem with this page? Or if a particular section isn’t visited at all – are there technical issues with this page?

Just as shops update their windows as the seasons change, your business may also be seasonally led and benefit from a light refresh in design to keep it feeling relevant and fresh to your audience. This could be as simple as an update in colours on headings or backgrounds or updating photographs to reflect the new season.

According to Oberlo, as of May 2022, 58.26% of all web traffic came through mobile phones. The mobile version needs to be built separately with a mobile focus – it isn’t just a case of using your desktop site and hoping it ‘fits’. User experience will be drastically compromised by a site which isn’t mobile friendly with issues on load, readability, navigation and display.

Need help? If you need to refresh your website, are looking to build a new site or have a business challenge that is holding you back, we could help you.

We are Olamalu, Drupal experts and experienced web developers. We’re a friendly and down to earth team based in West Oxfordshire, who work together to achieve brilliant outcomes. We’ve been building websites and designing tailormade tech solutions for a huge range of different challenges for over 10 years. We work alongside clients and really get under the skin of the business, understanding not just what is needed now, but also how to plan ahead and consider the business needs in the future.