Tips to Keep Your Website Relevant and Vital
Ray Access has always advocated for user-friendly website design and content. If your readers can’t find what they’re looking for, or what you promise, they’ll look for answers elsewhere. It’s just too easy to click away. It’s much faster and usually more efficient to keep clicking than to keep looking. Readers click until they find a site that provides answers.
Website trends in the past have sometimes done more to confuse visitors than to help them. The user experience (UX) gets muddled when designers go for flashy or cute. Remember the days when websites screamed at you with all caps, blinking headings and obnoxious graphics? That was a turn-off even when it was popular. And readers don’t feel respected or valued when content writers rely on industry jargon or high-falutin’ language rather than down-to-earth common sense.
UX Content
We’ve written about website trends and blogs that seem to talk down to readers or are seemingly more interested in showing off the writer’s extensive vocabulary rather than getting a simple message across. Fortunately, 2019 website trends seem to be heading more toward pleasing readers and visitors rather than boosting the egos of creators and writers.
Users want to trust what they see on your website. Friendly websites and blogs are not only more attractive, understandable and easy to navigate, they’re also authentic. According to Core DNA, one of the most important website trends you can count on in 2019 is a call for authenticity: “…if your content doesn’t accurately reflect your brand’s voice, the mission your company stands for, and the value you hope to bring your target audience, … you might as well not create it in the first place.”
Content Marketing Is Crucial
As fewer customers in every field and across industries rely almost exclusively on the internet for information, content marketing is becoming more crucial than ever. In fact, for many companies, the only place you’ll ever see marketing dollars spent is on their websites. These website trends make it all the more important for you to make sure your website, including your blog, reflects your business accurately.
Tell your story clearly. Provide your contact information prominently. Let your visitors know where to find current deals and ongoing specials. Plainly spell out who you are, what you do and how you fill their needs. Read your own website regularly to make sure your site is doing all those important things!
Interaction, Please
As the majority of consumers become more comfortable interacting with the internet and more experienced with its basic capabilities, they will want more. Website marketing company Blue Compass predicts that interactive additions to websites will lead the pack of 2019 website trends, giving visitors more options for talking back, providing feedback and asking questions.
They claim that as visitors are given more options to interact with companies that they believe are responsive to their needs, those businesses will excel, both in perception and in sales. Automated interactive website designs, again, are not just for show or to highlight your web team’s talent, but should instead provide added value to your visitors that leads to more sales.
Visitors Beware
As content marketing continues to play an important role in making sales, so search engine optimization (SEO) also will be undergoing its own fine-tuning that you can’t neglect. It’s wise to keep up with the changes if you want to continually rank well with the major search engines, where Google still dominates. (Some say more than 90 percent of searches occur on Google.)
Search engines are so hard to predict, though, as they seem to make annual changes to their algorithms. You can, however, expect high marks for websites that:
- Provide exceptional quality and value — in other words, useful information, especially on health and financial websites
- Are approachable and well-organized
- Present well on all mobile-friendly devices
- Load quickly, as speed is another factor that isn’t going away — the faster your site loads, the better SEO you achieve
At Ray Access, we believe valuable content will win the marketing race in the end. SEO tricks come and go, but people arrive at your website for one main reason: to get answers. Whether they find them on your site is something that’s within your control. Contact us to learn how we can help your company website.