Updating Your Homepage: Why and How Often?
Your homepage is the tool that creates a customer’s first impression of your product or service. It is the most popular landing page and the most common exit page on most websites. We’ve listed some tips to help you understand the importance of a good home page and how to improve your management of it.
Homepage As A Reputation Management Tool
The homepage has a major impact on your business’s online reputation. Reputation management starts with a customer’s first impression of your company, and your ability to provide good customer service.
Websites Cannot be Static or Boring
You would never leave a store front static, or ever change a store’s layout. Consumers have short attention spans. If you do not continually engage them, then they will be bored and move on to the next website.
To sell online you need to entertain. Websites need strong branding. There is a very fine balance when editing the home page between improving it and ruining your customer’s experience.
Colors, logos and ‘branding’ should remain the same on the home page. It doesn’t need to stay in the same place. But if you do change, then the changes need to be ‘bigger and better’ – never less.
If you can’t meet customer expectations then exceed them.
Seasonal Changes
It doesn’t matter which niche or market your company markets in, it must to change with the seasons. Your homepage needs to follow the ‘social flow’. Consumers perceive that when a website is static it is dead. When consumers are in a Christmas or spring mood, they will respond to a website that meets their expectations and has the same emotional impact as they are feeling.
Is Your Homepage Personal?
A website that changes communicates. Today’s consumers want to deal with real people. The #1 activity on the internet is communication and making relationships. In the past the adage ‘make it and they will come’ worked on the internet. That is no longer the case, not exactly.
Reputation Management
Consumers have more of a choice than they ever did before. They can leave reviews that will have a positive or negative impact on future revenues.
How can you protect yourself from bad reviews and increase sales from your website?
• Communicate with consumers
• Make your website look like a real person manages it
• Address typical consumer concerns
• Make your website look like you are not out ‘just for yourself’ but care about your consumers
• Make it apparent that you offer after sale support
What is Trending in your niche?
Your customers know what is trending. They know the latest news, newest products, and what to expect from your service.
Websites lose credibility when it appears that they are uneducated and behind the trends. If you don’t keep up with the trends on your homepage then you are losing potential customers.
Address the above concerns and you will know when to update your homepage. The answer lies in your consumers. What do they want? What do they like? How often do they visit your website?
For more tips and information about managing and maintaining an effective website and online presence, visit Webmaster For Hire's blog at
http://www.webmasterforhire.us/blog/.
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