Looking to Update Your Website in 2015?

The start of a New Year is always a good time to look at your website and have a good think about how you could improve it for the year ahead. Websites should never be static, and the most successful websites are constantly being updated and improved by adding content such as blogs, news, information and resources.

So how could you update your website this year?

The first thing to consider is whether you could get your website redesigned by a professional designer.

Is it looking old and a bit out-dated? Have you come across other websites that are fresh, modern and appealing, which make yours look too basic? 

Check out the websites of your competitors. Are they better than yours? Could you make improvements to bring yours up to scratch?

Contact a professional designer to see what they can do for you. At CSI Media we have designed websites for all kinds of businesses and organisations, and we can provide you with a modern, stylish website that will look great in 2015.

Have a serious think about what is not currently working on your website. Are visitors performing the action you want them to take? Are enough people signing up to your newsletter, commenting on your blog, buying your products?

You can use Google Analytics to help you with this. Once you sign up to this free tool, you can get access to a number of statistics about your website – or you could hire professional help if you don't know where to start.

For example, you can find out where your visitors are coming from and whether you are targeting them properly. Which pages do they visit? Which actions do they take? Which blog posts do they like reading?

The more you find out about how visitors find and interact with your website, the better position you will be in to make improvements.

The success and failure of websites depend on their content. Not just the content on the actual website, but also the content that you publish on third-party sites.

If you have not really developed a strategy for your content, now is a good time to think of one for the year ahead.

Come up with topics, ideas and themes that you want to explore, and use your Google Analytics research to rate existing content based on its popularity. Read other industry blogs and websites to find out what sort of content does well and generates the most buzz.

Don't stop at written content, but focus on other types of content as well, including: 

• photos;
• videos;
• presentations;
• infographics.

Rather than making changes based on guesswork, use A/B split testing instead. Devise different versions of your home page (website designers may be able to help you with this) and see which one generates the best response from visitors over a period of time.

Once you have the data, you can use this to improve your home page and other pages on your site. And you don't have to stop there – testing is a process that you can continually use to fine tune your website and make it perform better.

The start of a New Year is always a great time to give your website an update. There are many things that you can do to your site to improve it, so take the time now at the beginning of the year to think over the updates you can make to your site to ensure it is in good shape for the year ahead.