Is your website ready to pass this test?
I’ve been (and still am) working on my website during the summer to be ready for the back-to-school season in September. I couldn’t imagine how many things I had to change! That’s why I created a checklist (get to the end of the post and you’ll know what is this about) to not forget anything that I wanted to change.
This is a personal test that I challenge myself to pass by the end of the month/beginning of September. Do you want to take it with me?
Texts
A couple of years ago, I didn’t pay attention to the texts on my website. That’s why I’ve been studying copywriting during the last years. Obviously, this means that I have to rewrite all the content of my website with persuasive texts that sell.
Every single piece of text in your website must have an objective. You need to pay attention to every single detail:
Typography
Remember that you should use no more than two different fonts through your website. Maybe you can use a third one for graphic elements, such as pictures or infographics, but let’s stick to two fonts for now.
Also, it’s important that one of them is a serif font, and the other one is a sans serif one. What does that mean? Let’s have a look at this picture:
As you can see, serif fonts have additional strokes, as the one that you’re reading at this moment. Make sure that you don’t use two of the same type of typographies. I created a board on Pinterest with typography ideas that you can use both in your website and publications.
Also, pay attention to how you’re using your headings and subheadings. Try to create a clean text so search engines can understand what your website is about.
Copywriting
We need to create texts that sell. At the end of the day, that’s our main objective, isn’t it?
You should start with headlines. If your headlines aren’t catchy, your audience isn’t going to keep reading your texts (which would be a shame!) Here you have a great resource to create the most catchy headlines.
Now let’s focus on your body text. You must have clear at this point what the needs of your potential clients are. So you’ll have to exploit them in your text. Tell your readers what you’re going to do to solve these needs and concerns.
Of course, you’ll have to answer the most important question that your readers are asking themselves: “is there anything in this website for me?” And you’ll have to do it in your home page.
Don’t forget to write bearing your audience in mind, you have to connect with them. Here you have more copywriting resources to write the best copy for your website.
Pages
How many pages are included in your website? If you don’t know how to answer this question without checking your website, you should work on this section.
Objectives
Every page in your website must have an objective. I always say that going through a page is like a trip. You have to guide your audience from the very beginning until the end of the journey (aka what you want your audience to do).
Make a list with all your pages and write the objective for each of them in a column. Now you have to use your copywriting skills to achieve this objective.
For example:
If the objective of your home is to attract your audience’s attention so they keep reading your “service”/”work with me” page. You have to focus on that, add a clear call to action telling them what to do and persuade them with your texts.
SEO
Are all your pages SEO-optimised? Make sure that you’re using the most ideal keywords for each page and include them in your copy. Also check that all your on-page links work or your visitor could get lost in your website.
Images
Quality
The quality of your images is crucial. It’s the first graphic element that your visitor is going to pay attention to. Invest in a photography session if needed but don’t use your Facebook images.
Show yourself to your visitors. This promotes trust in your business. But don’t get carried away. You know that your audience is the most important thing here.
Compressor
Have you compressed your pictures? This will make you gain extra seconds when your website is loading. And now you can do it without risking the quality of your pictures. How? I always use one of these compressors.
You’ll also gain some points here in SEO.
SEO
Have you ever heard of the ALT tab of the images?
As you can see, there are different field to fill when we upload a picture to our website. I’d recommend spending some time and fill them all, but it’s especially important to fill the ALT tab and the caption field.
As you know, Google can’t read images 100% yet. So we need to help it so it can read the images that we include in our website. The ALT tab will help it to relate the image to the content that we’re creating. It’s important that you write your keyword. Don’t use spaces, use hyphens “-“ instead.
The caption is also important because it’s the text that will be shown in case that, for some reason, your image fails to load.
Corporative blog
Have you decided to add a blog to your website? Personally, that’s the best way to promote your brand new website. But we need to take some things into consideration.
Content marketing strategy
We can’t just publish a post just when we feel like it. That won’t work. If you need to take it seriously, you need a strategy. Create an editorial calendar and figure out how many times you’re going to publish a week/month and the topics that you’re going to talk about.
Take some time to learn what you audience wants you to talk about. Listen to them, to the questions that they ask, to their needs and you’ll be in the right path.
Of course, a content marketing strategy is much more than that, but this is a good way to start. Analyse your results and see if it’s working.
Objectives
What do you want to achieve? Do you want to monetise your blog? Do you want to sell your products/services? Maybe you want people to subscribe to your list?
Focus on one metric, the most important one for you and analyse what you can do to improve your results.
Branding
Branding is about the corporative image that your visitor see when he lands in your website. Let’s see the most important elements.
Logo
Most people can’t see the difference between branding and a logo. Well, your logo is just one element of your branding. Is it optimised? Where are you going to place your logo within your website? Personally, I’d go for the header so people can recognise your business at the first glance.
Corporative colours
Have you already chosen the colours of your business? It’s important to stick to them to be coherent through your marketing materials. Colours will convey different emotions within your website.
Have a look at this picture:
Now ask yourself: what emotions I want to convey with my business?
You can read more about this here.
Mobile optimisation
If we don’t want to be behind our competitors, we need to optimise out website for mobile phones. Google consider this very important and will take it into account when ranking our site.
Do you want to know how you can optimise your website for mobile phones? Just have a look at this post that I published a couple of months ago.
Subscribers
How are you going to turn your visitors into subscribers? I’m sure that at this point you’re aware of the importance of building your mail list. But how are you going to do that?
Probably if you have created a corporative blog, that would be a good way to start. You can attract people to your blog and then persuade them to subscribe to your email. But, what are you going to offer in exchange?
Now, is your website ready? I’ve prepared a checklist so your can evaluate your website and see what needs to be improved. You can download it by clicking the link below.
[sociallocker id=”3420″] Now you can download the file by clicking this link. Thanks for your support![/sociallocker]
Is your website ready to go back to school in September? What changes are you going to focus on? Would you add anything else to the list? I’d love to hear from you!
