Top 10 Web Design COVID-19 Tips for Website Owners & Businesses during Quarantined Coronavirus Pandemic

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The world is seeing a brand new surge of online web traffic, how can your website reach its full potential during this unique new opportunity?

Worldwide, we are all facing very unique challenges right now, and I hope that you & your families are as well as can be during this national emergency surrounding the coronavirus (COVID-19). However because of this, worldwide we are seeing a brand new surge of online web traffic, as individuals and families have no choice but begin to quarantine themselves for weeks at a time…

With this new increase in online web traffic, I have also seen a new rise in website requests from my clients. Many of us have dramatically different schedules now because of this uncontrollable situation, and in many cases we are even starting to see extra time to focus on some of these tasks that have been moved to a lower priority over the past few months or years.

Whether or not you are actively operating your business right now, or just want to prepare for when things do turn around, this is a great time to polish up various areas of your website, and even finish that new content or functionality that you had been wanting to get to for a while…

Here are my Top 10 Website Tips you can think about when reviewing your website… Plus one Bonus Tip!

Website Tip #1: Your Navigation Menu: Is it clear? Would someone new understand it? Are there any new areas of your business that you’d like to make new visitors more aware about?

An unclear navigation menu can instantly turn many new visitors away… You want to keep your navigation as simple as possible, but in a way that also makes your business easy to understand. Typically you’d want to create a path that leads to not only a new client or customer, but in many cases even just the LEAD is more valuable to most website owners. Once you obtain their contact information, you have much better chances of turning them into a customer via your email list, reaching out directly, etc. Notice that first link in our navigation menu, “Free Website Review”, is an eye catching menu item that triggers instant interest, provides value to the visitor, and also will bring us a new potential lead and future customer. How is your navigation menu set up? Could they be re-arranged? Could they be reworded? Are you using any drop downs? Are they categorized correctly? Are there too many and you need to simplify? Too many items can cause visitors to get overwhelmed. Please reach out if you’d ever like to review your navigation menu items.

Website Tip #2: Think about the exact words you are using… Are these the Exact Terms your new customers would be searching for? Have you compared your terms to Google’s Top Terms being searched for your market?

Take a quick look at all the page titles on your website… This is what Google is reading and displaying to new visitors more than anything else on your website. Pay attention to the exact words you are using, and even compare them with Google Trends where Google will tell you what the most used search terms are for your market. For example, if you title your page “Industrial Roofing” versus “Commercial Roofing”, one of the two terms has dramatically more searches than the other… This is extremely important for your website SEO and growing your business with new customers.

Website Tip #3: Your Images: How “thought out” and professional are the photos on your website? What type of first impression do they give?

Start with the very first image anyone would see on the home page of your website… Is it appealing? Is it the right image? Is the quality good? Would any other image be a better opening image? Is it compressed and loads quickly? Some say Google will even doc sites for slow loading images as well. Browse through the rest of your website and do a simple image review. Fewer high quality images will have a more powerful overall impact that a bunch of smaller low quality images.

Website Tip #4: Mobile Friendly: Does it look good? Is content spaced appropriately? Is your mobile navigation menu easy to navigate?

First of all, is your website mobile friendly? But second, does it actually look good on mobile? Are text and images sized correctly? Is there appropriate padding and spacing around your content? Statistically the internet is now seeing more mobile traffic than desktop, and our clients are even seeing into the ranges of 70-85% of all of their website traffic now on mobile devices. This is extremely important. Google has even been known to be flagging websites in searches that are not mobile friendly when someone is searching Google on a mobile device. This can certainly be affecting your SEO. Make sure mobile is one of your highest priorities, and make sure it looks great.

Website Tip #5: Add New Content: Don’t ever stop feeding Google new search results… If your website doesn’t write about it, You likely won’t exist as a search result for any given topic related to your business.

Start thinking outside of the box as far as content goes… You can never have enough content on your website. You may not want to display it all on the home page, or even in the main navigation of your website, however you can still provide extremely valuable content to visitors and Search Engines even nested a bit deeper into your website. For example, this exact blog post you are reading shows up nowhere on our website, other than an area nested deep within a drop down navigation item, however it still feeds Google, and generates new Search Results for our business… And at the end of the reading, is a quick contact form for generating new leads for our business. All of these little pieces work together here. This is very important to building a more successful website.

Website Tip #6: Trending Topics: Up-To-Date creative content relating to recent items in the news can boost your search results…

Have you thought about creating any new content recently? Google knows how often your website is changing, and some say even favors websites that do update more frequently. Blog posts typically bring in more new traffic to our clients websites than our clients without blogs. We often suggest writing about trending news topics and how you can relate it to your business as well. For example, the title of this post you are reading triggers a very unique interest that you may even have experienced, because of the recent news angle with the title “Helpful COVID-19 Web Design Tips for Business & Website Owners during Quarantined Coronavirus Pandemic“. Writing in creative ways like this can completely change the amount of traffic on your website.

Website Tip #7: Generate Leads in Multiple Ways: How are you creating ways to bring in as many new contacts for new customers as possible?

Think about the strategy in area #1 with the “Free Website Review” page on our website… Also think about the Contact Form mentioned in #5 that you will see soon at the end of this page… Think about Contact Page on your site. What about a simple “Newsletter Signup” form to collect more emails? What about a “Request a Phone Call” form on your website as well? Get as creative as you can, and guide each visitor into a path that easily allows them to reach out.

Website Tip #8: Explore New Website Plugins & Functionality: “Share This” on Facebook, Connect Social Media to Your Website, Start a Newsletter…

Just like the App Store on your phone, you likely have access to thousands of plugins to add powerful functionality to your website. This includes WordPress, Shopify, etc. Adding a new area on your website could include something as simple as sharing each page on a social media platform. Creating a simple way to do this will not only give visitors a tool to do it, but without it they won’t even think about doing it… Another plugin could import all of your recent Instagram posts into your website, same with your YouTube videos. You could even create a calendar/events area, or even import Facebook events into your website as well. Plugins will open up a whole new world for your website and your visitors.

Website Tip #9: Explore New Website Themes: It might be the perfect time for a Fresh New Look!

It is clear that we do have time in this situation to keep us occupied. Installing a brand new website theme can take some time as each theme does have a bit of a learning curve. However this might just be the perfect time to dive into this. Browse some new themes and just see if anything start sparking any new interest, you might find a whole new excitement for your website just by changing the theme. Also keep in mind your typical visitors, and how they may react to certain theme. Keep it clean, and easy to navigate and understand. If you have backups running on your website as described below, you can make a backup of your website, change the theme, and worst case scenario revert back to the backup of your website. You could even make a development copy version of your website.

Website Tip #10: Review Your Web Hosting: Make sure you have backups of your website, can it run faster, etc.

Just like everything else in technology, web hosts also evolve as well. Many come and go over the years, however new ones are often following website trends and catering web hosting specifically towards various website technologies. If you have been experiencing any issues with your website, the speed and performance of it, or even if it has even been down throughout the past year, you may want to consider this time a great opportunity to explore moving to a new web host. Many web hosts provide easy migrations and great support. Also pay attention to your backup options as well when exploring a new web host. Make sure you do your work comparing options, as well as reading reviews. We do also offer managed web hosting for those who do not want to deal with any of these areas of their website, and simply want to design and manage their content.

Website BONUS Tip: Check Your Google Analytics: See if your website is also seeing an increase in traffic at this time.

It never hurts to check in and see what is all going on with the use of your website… The more you know about how your visitors are interacting with your website, which pages they are going to first, which pages are the most popular, which pages could be performing better, even which pages people are LEAVING your website from, can all help you make better business decisions down the road. Please reach out if you need help with your Google Analytics or setting this up as well if you do not already. The sooner you do this the sooner you will be able to learn more about your website visitors.

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Our remaining tips will be sent to your email so that you have easy access to them for reference at any time:

    These are a handful of the highest priority items we would recommend reviewing on your website during this time. Thank you so much for your interest in reading this article. Sharing this link would be extremely helpful for our small business.

    If you’d like any help with any of this we can always do this on a call and work together if you’d like as well.

    Simply reach out via the contact form on our website if you’d like me to help you with any of this on your own website.

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      Because of our loyalty to our clients, when you contact Simple Web Help, you will always receive a direct response from our founder Dustin Grice. Contact us today for a free web quote. We look forward to hearing from you.

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