3 Website Updates to Grow Your Business

Distillery Creative offers three easy website updates to show your website love and bring more business through the door. Whether it is building a brand from scratch, rebranding, creating a custom website, launching an email newsletter campaign, or managing social media. Our goal is to help businesses shine and run smoothly. It’s the season of love, and here are three quick tips you can do for your small business online to show it some love.

Website Updates #1 – “Call-to-Action”

We’ve built, reviewed, and redesigned hundreds of websites. One of the most common errors that we see on websites is that businesses think they are being “clear and straightforward” when they actually aren’t. Websites often prioritize content over user engagement, featuring excessive text and lacking clear buttons that encourage users to contact the business. We call these “Call-to-Action” buttons, and they are a button or links that enables the user to take the next step and engage with the business. These buttons are very effective, making it easier for a user to quickly engage or call the company if they are on mobile. We recommend adding buttons with text like “Call Now,” “Contact Us Today,” “Schedule Your Appointment,” “Add to Cart,” or any other call-to-action that pertains to your specific services. At the end of every point you make about your product or services, make sure you’re adding a call to action to encourage the sale! Skim through your website and add a few more links to spruce it up!

Website Updates #2 – Run a speed test!

Your website probably loads super-fast for you because it is cached in your browser. You might be thinking, “I don’t need to run a speed test because my website is running just fine.” We’ve reviewed numerous websites that either fail to load or load so slowly that it’s painful. Studies show that if your website takes longer than 2 seconds to load, over 70% of users will bounce off your page–close the tab to your website. See our article on the statistics on speed and how it affects your business. Bounce rate is a very real and powerful metric that can deter sales and clients. Test your website speed on Pingdom for free. If you’re over 2 seconds, you’re losing 70% of your potential clients in those 2 seconds, so it’s time to clean up. We clean up websites as part of our job. We’re happy to scrub seconds off of your load time and improve your business. Ask us how today.

Website Updates #2 – Change Web Hosting

Of the three website updates, investing in secure, fast web hosting is the most important. You might be putting your business and your client’s personal information at significant risk, without even knowing it. When you buy website domain hosting from companies like GoDaddy, Bluehost, or HostGator, you’re essentially purchasing the name and a space to host your URL. Great, easy, one and done. More commonly, you’re probably not checking for brute force hacks on your website; you’re not updating your site every month to make sure it hasn’t been breached. You might not even be checking for speed, broken links, or damaged files.

Many businesses come to us when their site is six to 10 years old, broken, slow, and receiving spam messages. Old, broken websites and plugins are putting your business and your client’s personal information (billing info, addresses, email addresses, etc.) at risk of being stolen if your website isn’t maintained correctly. Switching hosting to a private provider like Distillery Creative is much like the difference between fast food and a private chef preparing your meals. Hosting your website with Distillery Creative means we update monthly, monitor spam, clean out broken software and plugins, keep your website running fast, and protect private information on your website. Switching your website hosting to a more secure home is a simple process and will show your website big love! Ask us how we can help you.

Got questions about these three website updates–call to action, speed tests, or website hosting?  You may also find our article, “7 Indicators You Need a Website Update,” helpful. Feel free to contact us with any questions.