Have you ever heard the saying, “your eyes are the window to your soul?” Well, your website’s homepage is a window into the soul of your business. It is the first impression that you present to site visitors, who’ll create a judgment about everything you offer in just a few short seconds.

If you’re a small business owner, managing your website might not be your top priority when you have so much to think about on a daily basis. If you haven’t touched the contents of your site’s homepage since you first launched, you’re not alone, but you might be missing out on an opportunity to get ahead of your competition.

While it’s not often you need to commit to a complete redesign of your site, a few swaps and updates on your homepage can be just enough to give your website (and, therefore, your business!) a boost.

Here’s why some freshening up is important, and some tips for refreshing your homepage even when you’re short on time and resources.

Why Refresh?

From potentially helping out your search rankings to highlighting new developments for your business, there are many reasons a site refresh might be beneficial for you, and seriously worth exploring.

• Show up higher in search results. Google rewards content freshness, and if you haven’t updated your site in a while, it might be viewed as less relevant than others, pushing your site lower on the search results. You might also want to refresh the keywords you use to bring people to your homepage if you’ve seen a dip in uses of the terms you’ve been using.

• Prove to current and future customers that you’re trustworthy. New or returning customers might not trust that your information is accurate if your site hasn’t been changed in several years.

• Feature exciting news and business updates. If you’ve added to your offerings, are welcoming new team members, or just received special recognition, now might be a great time to update your homepage with a refreshed site navigation or content block about the news.

• Uncover ways to effectively inform website visitors. Just like with anything in your business, it’s always beneficial to take some time to audit what’s working and what could be better on your website’s homepage. If you’ve seen certain sections on your site that are turning people away, a refresh could be helpful!

The great thing about refreshing your site, rather than taking on a whole redesign, is that you don’t need to engage in a bunch of intense projects to make a noticeable impact. A little tweak here and a little update there will be enough to make a meaningful difference in the experience for your current and potential customers!

Tips for a Website Refresh

A website refresh is much less of a commitment than a full-fledged redesign, but still requires some planning! When you are thinking about how to go about freshening up your home page, evaluate the amount of time you estimate it’ll take for you to get it done before you get started, and focus on the edits that’ll make the greatest impact first.

Here are some tips to inspire your plans.

1) Consider how your website appears on mobile devices.

Half of all website traffic worldwide came from mobile devices last year, and it’s likely this percentage will increase in the future. Take a look at which devices your website visitors are using; if your website isn’t mobile-friendly and you’re getting many visitors coming from their phones, it might be worth seeing if you can make some quick layout adjustments to support mobile viewing.

• Use a responsive design, which is a framework that lets the site adjust based on the dimensions of the device the viewer is using. This helps you avoid needing to make a specific version for both desktop and mobile.

• Keep text to a minimum, and the design simple. Teeny text and complicated designs can make it difficult to understand the content.

2. Audit your site’s navigation.

When you first create a website, you might set up the navigation bar based on how you anticipate people will want to click through your site, but once you’re live for a while, you’ll be able to look at your site’s performance and follow your visitors’ journeys through your website.

This tip is also especially helpful if you’ve recently made changes to your business’s offerings and need to update your navigation bar to reflect them.

3. Use your homepage to answer common questions.

You ideally want your site visitors to be able to understand what your business is all about from the moment they land on your homepage. To do this effectively, it’s helpful to spend some time thinking about what questions people typically want to know about your offerings before they commit to purchasing from you.

Whether you use information you’ve collected from being in the industry for a while, or email your customers a survey to find out their thoughts, use what you discover to create a homepage that tackles common questions or misconceptions right away.

You might also consider creating different landing page experiences for your different types of visitors. A returning customer might be more interested in finding about your newest arrivals, while a potential first-time buyer might want to access “About Us” information to help them learn more about your products or services.

4. Look to your competition for inspiration.

While it’s most important to create a homepage that speaks to your unique customer base, sometimes it’s helpful to explore what your competitors are doing in order to determine whether any elements of their strategies are worth emulating. You can also use a competitive audit to see what might not be working best for others so that you can create homepage content that’s different and better!

5. Pay attention to SEO, and update keywords if needed.

If you’ve been using certain keywords to attract visitors to your website, but are finding that your organic traffic has dipped lately, it could be time to update the terms you use in the copy and metadata on your homepage.

Take a look at what terms are bringing qualified traffic to your homepage, and use this information to help guide your SEO strategy and determine if you might want to make some changes. Just be sure to keep a record of what you changed, and when! You can track the traffic over the course of a few weeks, and change things back if there wasn’t any improvement.

6. Retire outdated content and swap in new assets.

Setting up a website is an investment, and there’s no reason for you to remove assets that are still relevant to the story you want to tell on your homepage. However, it’s important to look at the content on your site from time to time, and really make sure that they work as well now as they did in the past. If you have imagery that is clearly outdated, consider whether it could be worth your while to swap them out with new pictures that are a better fit for today.

Make sure to regularly update any site content on your homepage that is especially timely, such as upcoming events. See if you might be able to sync information with your calendar so that you aren’t always needing to manually update event information.

Freshening Up

When it comes to refreshing your website’s homepage, it doesn’t take much time or financial resources to make quick updates that have a lasting impact, but it can sometimes be a little confusing to decide how to make the process work for your own unique business.

Whether you could use some support with copywriting or aren’t sure where to begin, you don’t have to freshen up your website all by yourself. The team at Doukas Media has extensive experience not only building websites from scratch but also identifying which minor changes can make a major difference. We’re here for you and always happy to help.

Have you updated your website in the past? What are your favorite tips for refreshing your homepage? Did you agree with ours? Let us know in the comments!