Updating your Wix website may seem daunting, but there are times when it is essential to give your site some love. Website design is not meant to be static. Even if you work with a designer to create a strategic and beautiful site, you'll need to make updates as your business evolves and changes over time.
Updating your website is a natural part of rebranding your business.
Your website is one of your business's primary marketing channels, so updating it as part of your rebrand is necessary. Work with your designer and developer to update your logo, typography, and colors throughout the site. Beyond this, think about your site and template's overall look and feel and update it as needed to match your new visual brand identity.
If you still have stock photos on your site, this is the ideal opportunity to trade them for branded photography that authentically portrays your brand. Customers want to know, like, and trust you before doing business with you. A stock image doesn’t tell site visitors much about your brand, but a photo of you or your team at work will!
Website updates ensure that your copy and content are current.
We’ve all experienced this—you visit a website and under “upcoming events” is a workshop that happened three years ago. Or you click on the site's blog, and the last entry is from seven months ago. It makes you wonder—are they still in business? Does their business matter to them? Websites should be continually updated when you have new services, products, events, staff, or information to share.
According to Top Digital Agency research, 70% of consumers learn about a new business via a blog. If you maintain a blog, you need to be updating it on a consistent schedule. This gives readers confidence in you and contributes to your SEO efforts, giving users a reason to visit your site.
As a Wix Design Partner, I love introducing clients to the Wix Email Marketing tool, which was added to the platform a few years ago. It allows site owners to customize and send templates easily and drive traffic to blog posts or other site pages. You can create forms, drip campaigns, and even social media posts right from within the Wix site dashboard.
If your website isn’t achieving your goals, you need to get strategic.
User-friendly website design helps to increase traffic and conversions. On-page content and copy should be created and laid out so people can easily find information, book, or purchase.
In a survey by Clutch, 94% of the respondents, easy navigation is the most useful website feature. Your website also needs clear calls to action formatted and placed with the user in mind.
If you do add, remove, reorganize, or significantly update pages on your site, be sure to set up the proper 301 redirects. These redirects prevent users with old links from encountering error pages. Other important technical considerations include updating all of your apps, plugins, integrations, and security certificates. You want to avoid embarrassing glitches, streamline things for your site visitors, and avoid any potential hacks.
If you aren’t getting enough traffic or the right kind of leads, you may want to focus on reoptimizing your site for organic search rankings. Wix has made many enhancements to its platform over the last few years to make SEO easier to manage and more effective. In particular, Wix sites are coded with search engines in mind, giving your site a strong start. As a Wix Partner, I make sure my clients also take advantage of things like fully customizable meta tags, URL slugs, and canonical tags to improve their rankings.
Mobile-friendly website design is becoming more important every year.
Mobile website visits comprise approximately 50% of global website traffic, according to Statista. So if your site isn’t yet mobile-friendly, this should be a priority.
Think about how often you make purchases or do research into a product or business on your phone—even, at times, from inside a store when making a purchase decision! Your customers expect a lot from your site, even when viewed on a smartphone or tablet.
If your site isn't intentionally designed to offer an excellent mobile experience, they'll experience hard-to-read text, strange formatting, and longer load times. Most won't have the patience to stick around, and you'll lose potential customers. Your site's mobile experience also impacts your Google Search results. Since 2018, Google has been basing its search result rankings on mobile to meet more users' needs. Bottom line—mobile-friendly design matters.
So, does your Wix website need an update?
I encourage you to make a calendar reminder to review their entire site at least quarterly, if not more often. During this check-in, you should examine things like:
Your analytics including traffic sources, search terms, page views for specific pages, and bounce rates.
Your branding to ensure that everything on your site is still aligned with your brand.
Your copy and content to ensure that you haven't had any changes in product and service offerings, staff, events, or processes that would require major changes.
Your forms and any other interactive elements. Test them and make sure everything’s functioning perfectly.
Your mobile site, to make sure it’s loading quickly and displaying properly.
At least once every 1–3 years, consider investing in a professional site audit by a designer and copywriter. This can provide you valuable insight into what is working well and what you may need to change.
Need help auditing or updating your website design? Schedule a call today to discuss the possibilities.