A compelling web presence is no longer optional; it’s necessary. Your website often acts as the first impression consumers have of your business. However, technology and design trends are in constant flux. So, the pertinent question arises: When should you give your website the refresh it deserves?

The Evolving Landscape of Web Design

Web design is a dynamic discipline influenced by changing user behaviors, technological advancements, and design innovations. A design that was groundbreaking a few years ago can appear antiquated today. This evolution isn’t about being trendy; it’s about meeting users’ expectations and leveraging the best practices of the digital realm.

Signs Your Website Is Yearning for a Refresh

1. The Curse of Outdated Design: Web design trends move fast. Styles like skeuomorphism have given way to flat design and then to minimalism. If your website still looks like it’s from the early 2010s, users might question the currentness of your business offerings.
2. The Mobile Experience Dilemma: Over 50% of global website traffic originates from mobile devices. If your website squashes content or makes navigation a chore on smaller screens, it’s time to rethink. Plus, Google’s mobile-first indexing approach means non-mobile-friendly sites take an SEO hit.
3. The Slowpoke Syndrome: In our fast-paced digital world, waiting is the enemy. Research shows that if a site takes longer than 3 seconds to load, over half of the visitors might leave. Slow loading times aren’t just frustrating; they’re business killers.
4. Analytics Are Ringing Alarm Bells: Do you dive into your website’s analytics and notice an increase in bounce rate or a dip in conversions? These might be indications that users need help finding your site useful, engaging, or trustworthy.
5. Stale Content: Imagine visiting a news site and finding headlines from a year ago. Outdated content can give visitors the impression of a dormant business. Regularly updating your website keeps it relevant and valuable to your audience.
6. Navigational Nightmares: A complex or unintuitive navigation structure can confuse users. Modern websites prioritize easy navigation, ensuring visitors can effortlessly find the information they seek.
7. Security Red Flags: Digital threats are on the rise. An outdated site becomes a potential playground for hackers, putting your business and customers at risk.
8. Your Brand Has Moved On, But Your Website Hasn’t: If your brand undergoes evolution or rebranding, your website should reflect these changes immediately. Consistency is critical in branding; a misaligned website can send mixed messages to your audience.

Why a Refresh is More Than Just a Facelift

1. Elevating User Experience (UX): An updated website can enhance user journeys, making interactions smoother and more intuitive, leading to a positive perception of your brand.
2. Surging in SEO Rankings: Modern, mobile-friendly, and fast-loading websites are music to search engine algorithms. An optimized site can significantly boost your visibility in search results.
3. Optimizing for Conversions: New design principles and technologies allow more effective CTAs, leading forms, and user engagement strategies.
4. Maintaining a Competitive Edge: Your competitors are continuously evolving. Regularly refreshing your website ensures you stay at the forefront of your industry’s digital landscape.

Preparing for Your Website Refresh

1. Budgeting for the Future: A website refresh is an investment in your brand’s digital future. It’s essential to weigh the long-term benefits of enhanced user engagement and potential sales against the upfront costs.
2. Evaluating Your Current Tech Infrastructure: Before initiating a refresh, a deep dive into the platforms, plugins, and third-party tools your site uses is crucial. This ensures compatibility and streamlining.
3. Refresh or Complete Overhaul? Sometimes, more than tweaks are needed. A complete redesign could be beneficial if your site has deep-rooted usability or performance issues.

In today’s digital landscape, a website is more than just a static online brochure. It’s a dynamic platform that communicates your brand’s value proposition, engages users, and drives business goals. Regularly assessing and updating your site ensures your business stays relevant, competitive, and aligned with evolving digital best practices.

Engage with Experts

Considering giving your website the refresh it deserves? Connect with our experienced team for a comprehensive evaluation and roadmap to elevate your online presence.

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Adding a blog to a product or service-based website can be an effective way to improve the website’s search engine optimization (SEO), attract and engage visitors, and establish the company as a thought leader in its industry. Here are a few key benefits of adding a blog to your product or service-based website.

Improved SEO

Blogging regularly can help improve your website’s search engine ranking by providing fresh, relevant content for search engines to index. By including keywords in your blog posts, you can also increase your website’s visibility for those specific terms.

Attracting and Engaging Visitors

A blog can be a great way to attract new visitors to your website and keep existing visitors engaged. By providing valuable, informative content, you can establish your company as a thought leader in your industry and build trust with your audience.

Establishing thought Leadership

Blogging can be a powerful tool for establishing your company as a thought leader in its industry. By providing valuable insights and expertise on industry-related topics, you can position your company as a go-to source for information and build trust with potential customers.

Generating Leads

A blog can be a great way to generate leads for your business. By including calls-to-action in your blog posts, you can encourage visitors to learn more about your products or services, and provide an easy way for them to contact you.

Building a Community

A blog can be a great way to build a community around your products or services. By encouraging comments and engagement, you can create a sense of community and foster a sense of loyalty among your readers.

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Creating social media content that trends can be a great way to increase engagement and reach a wider audience. Here are a few tips to help you create social media content that trends.

Be Timely

Create content that is relevant to current events, holidays, or popular topics. This can help your content be more likely to trend because it is relevant to what people are already talking about.

Use Visuals

Visual content, such as images and videos, tend to perform better on social media than text-only content. Use high-quality images and videos that are eye-catching and engaging to increase the chances of your content trending.

Use Hashtags

Hashtags can help your content be discovered by a wider audience. Use relevant and popular hashtags to increase the visibility of your content and make it more discoverable.

Encourage User-Generated Content

Encourage your followers to create and share their own content related to your brand or product. This can help to create a sense of community and increase engagement with your content.

Collaborate with Influencers and Other Brands

Collaborating with influencers or other brands can help to increase the reach of your content. Influencers and other brands have their own followers that may be interested in your content, which can help to increase visibility and engagement.

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Just as first impressions are important when meeting new people, the first impression customers have of your company through your social media presence can determine whether or not they want to work with you. Here are some of the reasons why your social media presence is essential to your company’s website.

Awareness

Having more ways for customers to view your company expands the number of people you can potentially reach in a relatively inexpensive way, which will result in more sales.

Reliability

Maintaining a social media page can provide additional evidence of how well your company performs. The more information you can provide to customers and the more interaction you can have with them, the more likely it is that they will trust your company.

Engagement

Giving your customers more information increases the amount of time they spend on your website. Furthermore, after visiting your business’s social media, customers are more likely to interact with other areas of your business such as your website.

Easy Feedback

Customers can easily provide feedback on your business thanks to the ease of comments, likes, and direct messages on social media platforms. Furthermore, by comparing reviews from your social media platforms, website, and in-person interactions, you will be able to better analyze how your business is doing.

Personableness

Your business’s social media humanizes your company, allowing customers to see your team as more reliable and, as a result, trust your company to provide what they want. Reliability and trust are important factors in making your company memorable to current and prospective customers.

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Your company’s website gives your customers the background information they need. Just as first impressions are important when meeting new people, the first impression customers have of your company through your website can determine whether or not they want to work with you. Here are some of the reasons why your “Meet the Team” page is essential to your company’s website.

Reliability

Introducing your team on your website gives visitors a better understanding of what the company stands for and what services it offers. This page can provide information on how long a team has been in a specific industry and highlight their strengths, giving visitors confidence in trusting your company.

Show off your Team

The “Meet the Team” page is used to highlight your team’s strengths and to allow customers to interact with your team. This, in turn, increases the credibility of your team.

Help Users Find the Appropriate Person

Because the “Meet the Team” page highlights the strength of each member, customers can easily refer to the person who can help them with their specific concern. Including profile pictures on the “Meet the Team” page will also give your website a more personable feel.

Memorability

The “Meet the Team” page humanizes your company, allowing customers to see your team as more reliable and, as a result, trust your company to provide what they want. Reliability and trust are important factors in making your company memorable to current and prospective customers.

Increased Website Engagement

Giving your customers more information increases the amount of time they spend on your website. Furthermore, after visiting the “Meet the Team” page, customers are more likely to interact with other areas of your website.

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Let’s say you’ve had your clothing business for over 5 years – so many things have changed within that short time frame. TikTok became the top social media platform, your employees are now working remotely after the COVID 19 pandemic, and neutral colors are what’s in style at the moment. A rebranding is definitely needed to keep up with the ever-changing customer base in order to modernize it, advertise it, and keep your target audience attracted. There are many aspects to consider when thinking about when to rebrand your business.

Do your Platforms need a “Facelift”?

If your website or social media platform does not portray anything modern or engaging enough to beat your competitors, your business needs a rebrand. Failing to do so will turn off customers from buying your products. For example, if your business’ platforms lack color or high-quality images, your buyers won’t deem your business as reliable and your business won’t stand out.

Brand Identity

Your brand needs to face a united front. If you manage an outgoing team and want to attract creative potential employees, your brand needs to reflect that. If you’re a small business that sources only from other small businesses, make it known that you favor supporting small businesses. Customers need to know what you’re about, what your brand’s values are, and how it reflects in the way you conduct business.

Your Product List Changed?

If your business name reflects just some of the products you sell and you’ve since expanded that product list, your business name may need updating. “Dunkin’ Donuts”, for instance, is now “Dunkin’” to emphasize the fact that they now sell other kinds of food and a variety of drinks.

Here at Made in Fort Worth, we build websites and help with rebranding and social media. If you need help with a brand refresh or a full rebranding, use our inquiry form to get in touch and our team will help you scale your business and target the audience you’re trying to reach.

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Generating leads for your business can seem like a daunting task. After all, having a consistent customer base and turning leads into paying customers is essential in keeping your business growing. Here are some top, online lead generation techniques to help your business grow.

Content Marketing

Creating e-books or free, downloadable pieces of information and distributing them is a great way to generate leads. While these resources are typically free, adding a call-to-action at the end is a great way to attract customers that enjoy what your business has already offered them.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization through blogs, social media, and other mediums is a great way to attract paying customers to your website. People typically find solutions to their problems by browsing the internet. By building content dedicated to solving these problems and using keywords to make your business easy to find, you’ve established trust with potential customers who will more than likely buy from your business.

Newsletters

Regular newsletters keep customers engaged and remind them about your business and what you have to offer. It’s a great way to connect with existing customers about new trends and entice them to come back through promotions or sales announcements.

If you’re new or starting out your business, understanding that online lead generation is key to success because the nature of customers and their buying decisions are constantly changing with new technology. Contact Made in Fort Worth and we’ll help you optimize your business’ potential.

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The average professional website takes five to six months to build. During this time, your team and hired professionals are diligently working to fill your website with great content to engage readers and entice visitors to stay.

When you launch your website, you might feel that the work is done, but in reality, the work is just beginning.

Building your website around your personal or company brand is an ongoing process that requires upkeep and refinement over time. Here’s what you need to know about building your website.

Three Tips for Building Your Website

Venturing into the digital world is terrifying and intimidating sometimes, but it’s also exciting and rewarding.

When building your website for your personal brand, remember that you want your viewers and visitors to connect with you. Establishing a connection is an essential part of creating a successful personal brand website. Here are three tips to help you accomplish this goal.

Tip #1: Implement Communication Strategies

Communicating with your target audience is crucial to your business’s success. For decades, email marketing dominated the internet as the best way to communicate with customers.

The problem with email marketing is that you can only talk to people who subscribed to your list–you can’t gather email addresses on your own.

It’s at this point that social media dominates the conversation. As more social media apps focus on video and authentic public interaction, algorithms focus on how well a company connects with the viewers based on retention and clicks.

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Building your personal or company brand starts with developing a rapport with digital consumers and establishing credibility with them. And if they like you and want to support you, digital consumers turn into customers who subscribe to your email marketing list.

Tip #2: Determine Your Writing Style

There’s a reason experts say “content is king.” Content drives your business and shares your knowledge with current and prospective customers.

But content is more than the words you share–it’s how you say them. The way you speak to customers online establishes a standard they can come to expect. And your tone and writing style must match your missing as a business.

For example, if a coffee shop espouses to be a great place to relax and work but uses stuffy language and seems impersonal online, you’ll turn away prospective customers.

Your writing style permeates everything you do in your responses and posts, so make sure it matches your purpose.

Tip #3: Sharing Personal Content

Unique content is closely related to your writing style. What you share on your website is just as important as how you share it.

Personal content focuses on the business and helps prospective customers get to know the team. Sharing information about employees, the backstory of the business, and other little-known facts establishes a connection with people and help them trust you.

Made in Fort Worth Can Help You

When you set out to build a website for your brand or company, focus on establishing a connection with your audience through social media content, writing style, and written content on your website. A deep, emotional connection with these three facets will last years.

If you need help getting started, allow Made in Fort Worth to help you get off the ground.

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Why do people love Apple’s, Samsung’s, and Google’s websites? Because they’re easy to use, simple in design, and provide people with the information they need.

These companies didn’t stumble on success–they worked hard for it, starting with web design.

If you’re ready to take your company up a notch and find more success, continue reading about how website design can help you and complete your goals.

What is a Website Design Process?

The website design process is something that all companies need and do regularly. Web development is a step-by-step procedure you or a marketing agency uses to construct and flesh out a fully functioning website. Web design includes wireframing, coding, and content creation.

Our Web Design Process

When you work with a digital marketing agency like Made in Fort Worth, you can work with web designers who thoroughly understand the process and how to efficiently build and maintain your website.

Here is the typical strategy for building a company’s website from the ground up or restructuring an existing website.

Step 1: Discovering the Purpose

The purpose of your website determines the planning and organization of the project and serves as your mission. Without a clear development process, it’s impossible to effectively achieve your business goals.

Step 2: Scope and Sequence

Scope and sequence involve discussing every aspect of the design process.

A common way to plan this out is by using the Gantt Chart.

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A chart like this helps everyone involved understand the starting time, deadlines, and which projects we need to complete before moving on to the next one.

Additionally, a sitemap is another excellent feature to use, and this tool helps you understand the ins and outs of your website and how each page connects to the other.

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Using these two planning methods helps the entire group stay on pace and complete the project by the deadline.

Step 3: Content Creation

Now that we have the purpose and plan all figured out, we can begin creating content for your website to increase traffic and sales.
Content includes copy, like blog posts and articles, videos, images, and helpful tutorials. The type of content on your website depends on your niche, but most businesses utilize all kinds of content to increase their search engine optimization (SEO).

Step 4: Visual Design

The average person spends less than 15 seconds looking at your website, which means that by the time they scroll through your homepage or look at your menu, they’ve made up their mind about your website and company.

People care about how things look, so your want your visual design to welcome your visitors and encourage them to stay longer. Part of this is using legible colors and fonts.

Step 5: Testing the Website

No website runs perfectly the first time you test it, so prepare for hiccups and bugs to fix. And while this might feel frustrating at times, planning for repairs ahead of time helps you in the long run because you ensure your website is ready when you launch it.

Step 6: Launch Party

The final step is to launch your website and celebrate your hard work. Getting to this point is challenging and requires the utmost cooperation and communication.

If you have a social media presence before building an entire website, update your followers about the great news and send them your way.

Conclusion

Building a website is a lot of work and fun. But it can also be stressful, especially if you don’t have a plan. When you follow the six steps outlined here, your company and marketing agency can achieve your goals.

If you’re ready to take the next step for your business and build a website to share with the world, find out how Made in Fort Worth can help you today.

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