If you're feeling like your site is kind of a hot mess, and you're not even sure where to start with it, you're not alone. Which website upgrades should be first? What kinds of upgrades would have the most payoff? And, maybe more importantly, what could you get done if you only have a day to work on it?
Here are the top 3 quick upgrades (plus a bonus tip) that I would recommend to anyone trying to quickly organize their site and see big results without investing a ton of time.
Never mind your hot blog content, your offers, your carefully-worded About page or Sales page.
Your audience can't use any of it if they can't easily find what they're looking for, or what's useful to them.
Your job, as the leader of your business and the creator of your client experience in total, is to direct a simple, organized path that moves people through the phases of: discovering you, connecting with you, engaging with you, and finally, hiring/buying from you.
If that sounds a lot like a funnel, you're right. That's exactly what it is.
We think of funnels as they relate to offers, social media, email lists, and how to tie it all together into one experience that leads to sales. And yes, those are all parts of a sales funnel. But your site should have its own mini-funnel mapped out, too.
Don't get intimidated by this idea. It really just means designing a roadmap of where you want your audience to stop along the way to hiring you. Then design your site navigation and home page (or front page) with those priorities in mind.
If your pages, especially your front page, are not intentionally doing this, and instead act like a dump zone for everything you've ever wanted to say to potential clients...it's probably looking and feeling like chaos. It's too much. When things feel like too much, or they have to work to make sense of it, your audience will check out.
Do not make them have to work to decode what you're saying or offering. Don't make them untangle a messy web of content and ideas flying every which way.
Simplify!
You've probably seen the links in Instagram bios that bring you to a list of links. It's an easy way to use the one link you get on your Insta bio to direct people to multiple things you'd like them to check out. You can use apps like Milkshake to do this, but you can also create a completely customized "link in bio" page on your own website.
I recommend going full custom with something like this, so that you have the ability to add anything you want, as well as total creative control.
Use this page to direct an intentional experience for new potential clients who find you on social media. Where do you want them to go next? What can you share that would entice them to explore your site and content further? What offers can you tease on social media that they'll click through to?
Choose a few priorities (between 3-5 is perfect), make it cute, and add that custom link to your social media bios!
This is one of a few easy upgrades that can have big payoff in terms of your SEO (search engine optimization). It's also huge for accessibility--as in, making sure your site is accessible to people with disabilities who may rely on accommodations like a screen reader in order to access your site.
Your site needs to be accessible to both the people who will be using it, and the robots that will be crawling and indexing your site--or basically, scanning it and organizing what it finds, so it can show those things to people in search results.
Someone who can't easily see images on a screen is going to be confused and potentially lost, if the image is named something like IMG_0637.png and there's no context or description for what the image is. Likewise, a robot doesn't know what your image is about unless you tell it.
So make sure your images are all named descriptive things (such as creative-brand-design.jpg or favorite-winter-outfits.png) and also be sure to fill in alt tags for them. Alt tags are another way to provide context for images, so that people (and robots) that can't see images will still know what they're about. Examples of solid alt tags could be things like "Rodriguez family photo shoot in Chicago, Illinois" or "Ahi poke bowl recipe."
All of this is easy to manage if you're on WordPress, right from the Media link on your dashboard.
Taking this step ensures that everyone accessing your site can have as complete an experience as possible.
It also means that the search engine robots can properly identify everything on your page, and show it to more people in searches.
Make sure every post and page has keywords set, metadata is set, and has a solid (captivating) meta description.
If you're on WordPress, use a plugin like SEOPress or Yoast to help you easily manage this. Everything you'll need will be found right on the page/post editor.
Leverage those search engines to get you as much exposure as possible!
Have a little more time to spend on your site upgrades? Want to make sure you're doing all you can to optimize it for search engines?
Grab my FREE SEO Cheat Sheet ebook below!
