How to Refresh your Website in 2018

New year, new start, not-so-new story.

Friends, it’s time to refresh your website. Argh, I know, you hate it. You have one million other to-do’s. But I’m sorry to say it: your website most likely needs to come first. Your website is your most precious digital asset and we guarantee you’re missing out on business if you’re not investing the time into making sure it’s perfect.

Now, this doesn’t mean you need to spend an enormous amount of time or money to do a little refresh. Take a week or two and hunker down. It’ll pay off over the next year and then you won’t be getting those embarrassing emails: “I tried to contact you on your site, but couldn’t find where to do so.” Not good! Here we go.

Do your competitor research: Which of your competitors are really excelling online? Study their strategy. You can really learn a lot from what’s already working out there. Did you know many large companies (Walmart, Home Depot, McDonalds,etc.) will oftentimes share demographic studies or simply plan on opening close to one another because they know one of them has already put in the hard work: the market research? Don’t over complicate things. If you know a business similar to yours is doing well, check out what they do and see if you can apply it in a tasteful (and obviously not copyrighted) way. Maybe it’s their simplicity or their frequency of posts. Maybe they are super quick to reply to customers online. Learn from what works and expand upon it.

Look outside of your industry: I used to work in finance and the most helpful habit I got into was finding inspiration outside of my industry. It’s so easy to get tunnel vision and end up in “group-think” zone. Pay attention to the world around you and you can bring back ideas from places not even remotely close to your business. This is a good thing! It means you’re able to infuse new air into a stagnant area. Don’t be afraid of being different; embrace it.

Focus on three simple changes: It’s easy to get overwhelmed when trying to do a website update. Once you do the work previously mentioned, take a deep breath and choose just three things. Then really focus on them. It’s much better to do a few things really well than everything poorly. This will make the project much more managable. Once you’ve conquered those three items, you can take on a few more and work your way through the list.

• *Bonus* So, this isn’t required, but if you’re really feeling ambitious try to tackle a new social media platform this year. Experiment with the one you’ve been curious about. See what works and what doesn’t. You don’t have to be perfect; trying is better than doing nothing at all. By the end of the year, the energy put into the new platform will be menial compared to what you have learned.

Good luck and let us know how it goes! Also, be on the lookout for our YouTube video describing more tips to refresh your site in 2018.

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