Think about the last time you made a cold call to a lead that would be perfect for your business. It most likely went one of two ways:
- You left an impression that built awareness of your product and hopefully will – or did – lead to a sale.
- You got hung up on because the person you talked to just didn’t see why they needed your product.
Regardless of the outcome, you took notes on what sparked the person’s interest (or didn't) and adjusted that strategy for the next time.
Treat your website redesign just like a cold call
It’s a similar approach – the visitors on your website right now are deciding if they’ll buy or pass. Are you losing business because your website isn’t convincing people that they must have your products? If so, it’s time to use the same takeaways that you did from your cold call – take notes on its success and adjust your website so visitors turn into leads that end up being repeat customers. It’ll take some planning to get you there. When thinking about your website redesign, it should be more than just a flashy stock template that you picked because you wanted to stay competitive in your industry. And while it’s important that it looks nice, it’s just as necessary that it follows function and works for you – helping you learn more about your visitors and which products best suit their needs. To do this, you must consider search engine optimization (SEO) from the start so you’re able to track each customers’ experience throughout your website.
Create a positive experience from the start
This is the impression you’re leaving behind. An audit of your current site will help you discover where you need to be. It will also help you decide what to keep and what needs to be developed so you’re reaching your goals – a purchase, a lead, longer visit time, etc. And while you’re auditing the look and feel of the site, it’s important to look at metrics for your current site. What are people searching for that leads them to your business? This is also a perfect time to take a look at Google’s algorithm to make sure you aren’t – or won’t be – using too many poorly placed keywords. All this auditing and analyzing leaves the ability for you to enhance. After all, you wouldn’t be looking at a redesign if you didn’t want to enhance something about your current website, right? So, if a high amount of your users are coming from mobile ads or mobile social media, it’s ideal that their first impression is just as important as those who are visiting via a desktop. But mobile visitors aren’t the only ones you’ll need to track. You want to track them all so you’re able to benchmark after you’ve launched. [box type="info"]Learning from past data on your website helps you refine, optimize, and grow in the future.[/box] Benchmarking is fun. This is where you’ll collect data on your new site’s performance – and then evaluate it against your audit. Take a look at the success – and bumps – to improve your online cold call. Not sure how to get started or need a refresher on SEO? Learn more about its impact on your site, dive deeper into how to audit, identify keywords, plus avoid other common backend website mistakes by taking a look at our detailed website redesign SEO guide.