WorldWide Drilling Resource

Seven Ways to Improve Your Home Page on the Web Adapted from Information Provided by the U.S. Small Business Administration Your website is your virtual place of business. Just like your office or shop, you want it to be neat, clean, attractive, inviting, and professional looking. Here are seven low-cost ways to improve your website’s home page to meet today's standards - and they’re simple! 1. Freshen the Content Regularly: Recently, I saw a restaurant website highlighting its Thanksgiving menu - and it was January! The restaurant had a great idea to add a special seasonal menu to the front page. However, they didn’t execute it well, and let it stay up way too long. Schedule a monthly reminder to check your website and update the home page content, or have someone do it for you. 2. Make Sure it has a Call to Action: Ask yourself: what’s the top action you want visitors to your website to take? Here are three examples of common calls to action: e Sign up for your e-mail list - When people sign up for your e-mail list, you create an ongoing connection allowing you to market to them. Most e-mail marketing software offers an easy way to insert a sign-up box. e Shop in your e-Commerce store - If you sell products online, embed pictures of a few products on your home page to entice buyers to look through, or add a prominent “Shop Now” button. e Fill out a lead form - If you sell services instead of products, encourage visitors to fill out a lead form with contact information so you can follow up. 3. Add Contact Information Prominently: Examine your home page objectively. Are you making visitors hunt or guess how to reach you? Many small businesses add contact information in the header or footer of every page. At a minimum, include an e-mail address and phone number. If you receive customers at your location, add your physical address. If you’d rather use a separate “Contact” page, add a large prominent link to it. 4. Add Images and/or Video: Look at your home page. Is it text heavy? Images break up big blocks of text - and they’re more inviting to visitors. Include at least one photograph showing your business, team, or products. If no one in-house is a competent photog- rapher, invest in professional photography. In most areas, you can hire a professional photographer at rates starting at a few hundred dollars. Videos are also excellent. Create a how-to video demonstrating your product, or of you welcoming visitors. Load it on YouTube or another video platform. Then embed the code to put it on your site. 5. Update Your Design to Current Standards: Awebsite designed in 2005 will look dated compared to one designed in 2016. An outdated web design gives the impression your business is outdated too. It’s best to update the entire website; but if time and money are in short supply, at least redesign the home page to create a great first impression. Update other pages later as time and money permits. Contact your web developer and ask for a home page facelift. Or if you are a do-it-yourselfer, purchase a low-cost template - you can typically buy a professionally-designed template for under $100. 6. Improve Page Speed: If your home page loads sl owly, visitors may never go beyond it; and very slow pages can negatively affect rankings in search engines. Take the speed test at: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ It’s quick; and the best part is you’ll get suggestions for how to improve the speed. 7. Make it Mobile Responsive: Last but certainly not least, today’s websites need to be viewable on mobile devices. This is especially true for local businesses where customers may be searching on a smartphone from their car for a business nearby. Awebsite that is not set up for mo- bile devices can be negatively downgraded in search engine results. If you give your site a facelift, make sure the new design is “responsive,” meaning it is responsive enough to adjust to mobile devices. The same goes if you purchase a template. Image courtesy of medithIT, flickr.com 72 JUNE 2016 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® Snow and adolescence are the only problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough.