Reflecting on ourselves and the year behind us is an age-old New Year habit.  It’s great – you get to think about how you’ve grown, how the world around you has changed, and then you get to come up with goals (resolutions) to guide you through the year ahead. That same reflection process should be applied to your website too.

The best way to start your website reflection process is – of course – by visiting your website. It’ll only take a few minutes to discover whether you need to make any changes to your site.

Here are Expert’s top 5 questions to ask yourself during your website reflection process. If you can answer ‘yes’ to all of them then you’re on track to carrying through some of the best web practices.

1) Is your website mobile-friendly?

In 2015 Google changed the way it determines which websites rank highest in mobile search results. This change makes complete sense considering the number of Google searches made on mobile phones surpasses the number of searches made on desktop PCs nowadays.

Google’s new search engine algorithm simultaneously makes it easier for people to find ‘usable’ websites on mobile devices, while also penalising websites that are not formatted with mobile friendly design (also known as responsive design).

Google analyses a site’s mobile-friendliness based on its usability and adaptability across all devices - looking at things like text size, link layout and content placement. If you want to find out whether your website meets Google’s mobile friendly standards then you can access their user-friendly test here.

Expert has helped most of our clients to make the move to mobile friendly design for their websites, but there are still a handful that need to be upgraded. If you’re interested in a free, no commitment quote comment below…

2) Is your staff page up-to-date?

A great tool that helps to develop your personal connection with site visitors is the staff profile page. Showing off the people of your organisation not only makes building relationships easier, but also lets you showcase your team’s credibility.

A regularly updated staff web page puts a face to the name and shows visitors exactly who does what, which is particularly important during a time where a great deal of our communication is done via telephone and email. 

With this in mind, the staff web page should be updated as staff members leave, new staff members are employed and when existing staff accomplish new things.

3) Does your site’s design look dated?

If it does, chances are it needs a re-skin. A website re-skin, a.k.a redesign, doesn't mean necessarily starting your site over from scratch; instead it might just need a tweak here and there in order to give it that fresh and flexible website feel.

Your site is the online face of your organisation and visitors want to feel confident that you can help them meet their needs as soon as they arrive at it.

A few elements worth considering are the colours, fonts size, placement of vital information, site navigation, and the amount of images displayed on your website (we’re at a time where visual content rules the web).

If it looks like your site might need a re-skin, then contact us at us@expert.co.nz to find out how we can help.

4) Can you add anything to the company portfolio?

This question really lets you reflect on your victories from last year. Did you land a new high profile client? Start working on a new project? Or maybe you expanded some of the services you have on offer? If that’s the case then you need to let the world know! If you haven’t already, you’d better create a dedicated webpage on your site to promote your organisation’s achievements.

5) Are your news and events still relevant? 

Another great way to keep your site’s visitors aware of industry relevant news and events is by keeping your news and events sections current.

Another advantage of updating your news and events regularly is that the text you add will serve as keyword rich content and will dramatically help with your search engine ranking.The reason for this is that search engines are more likely to find and display your website closer to the top of search results when it’s evident that it’s still alive and relevant.

Did you find this article helpful? What other site-savvy things would you like to learn about? Comment below with your thoughts