Think of the website as the online interface of your store. And think of the home page as the storefront. Most businesses that have a physical store, do understand the need to change the content of their display window. They do that at least 4 times a year, seasonally, to attract potential customers. Most of them who own an online store understand the need for content change on their website to reflect the change that is happing in their store like the showcase of new products, new services, sale promotions, events, etc. This is how they promote the business online. But I see also many businesses that don’t change anything on their website for years. Especially on their home page. Often, they don’t have the resource, never think about it making a difference or simply don’t know how to strategize. In this article, I will share 5 things to do on your homepage to stay current. I will share 5 things that must be changed periodically to stay in flow and not lock yourself into stagnation because stagnation kills.
1. Change home page banner:
The home page banner is the most common element that visitors see when they land on your website. Like a storefront a new image & message on your homepage must be periodically changed to indicate change, to inform repeated visitors that the business is active, that there is something new to find and experience. You can do this every year, every six months or every three months or even every month.
You don’t have to change everything but, in this article, I will share 5 things that must be changed periodically to stay in flow and not lock yourself into stagnation because stagnation kills.
2. Feature latest blog post:
Writing articles is a good way to promote a business culture, gain trust, engage through comments and feedback and establish a role as an authority. When you post these articles on social media or others share them, it directs traffic towards your business. It makes sense to also feature the latest blog post on your homepage for those who directly access your website and land on the homepage.
Remember, while do you need to write a new article, the element that sits on your homepage needs to be set up only once and it will automatically pull the latest feeds from your bog post.
3. Showcase a project
Your project could be an upcoming event or a highlight of a recent past event. You can also showcase a project that you are working on. It can be passed, current or an upcoming project. This can be used as a strategy to promote the success of your business. For example, on the wow studio home page we are using a Post element to feature projects from two different categories randomly. This way every time someone visited the site a different project is displayed.
4. Perform regular maintenance
Web design changes constantly because designers and developers discover better ways to deliver content, improve security, optimize interaction, and engage users. For example, if you are using WordPress, and “an estimated 64 million websites currently using WordPress”, then you have to regularly apply the updates of WordPress, the theme you are using and the plugins. Here you should always do a backup before a major update, and always check to make sure your site including your contact form works.
5. SEO optimization
This is a category of its own. Google came out with “Core Web Vitals” which in 2020 started focusing on 3 aspects of user experience: loading, interactivity, visual stability and all with the goal to help optimize the web for quality of user experience.
image from Google Core Web Vitals – https://web.dev/vitals/
This is how Google will rank your site. It is worth looking at this once a year to ensure all is well on your site. Start with your landing page, then your service pages/most important pages.
The site allows you to measure page quality with a report on what needs to be improved on your page. For example, here we run an audit on thewowstudio.ca and after applying some of the suggestions we scored the following result.
You can also measure the page speed of your website at https://pagespeed.web.dev/ to view how your site performs on mobile vs. desktop. Note you may have to “analyze” a couple of times to get a more accurate reading.
If your numbers display in the red zone. You should start putting resources into improving your content so that your audience has a better experience.
