New Year, New Website? Top Tips on Improving Your Online Brand in 2022

Facing an increased amount of competition, it is simply vital that any business have a presence online – whether they sell online or not. With search engines such as Google being the first port-of-call for anyone searching for products or services, a website that can attract and inform them of the things they need will be a huge factor in winning their business.

This is why here, we have put together the best tips on improving your online brand through your website.

How To Create a Winning Website For 2022

Ensure your website is mobile responsive

The ability for your site to be read on mobiles is critical in 2022. Adults spend several hours every day browsing their phones, with much of it spent trying to find information on search engines. If any potential customers land on your site but it's hard to read or navigate, they will have a negative experience of your brand and are likely to abandon you in favour of a competitor. Negative experiences will also play into how highly your site is ranked in a keyword search too – making it harder for new people to find it in the future.

Make it easy to find

A domain name that either matches your company name or describes your business in some way is ideal for brand recognition (you can even have multiple domains that point to your website). You can use all this to your advantage by incorporating digital marketing techniques, such as technical SEO, keyword research, content promotion and paid advertisement campaigns to drive traffic to your site.

Place your contact details 'above the fold'

If your business depends on customers being able to contact you, you should put that information where they can find it. 'Above the fold' refers to the section(s) that sit above the main content of your website – this places your contact information in a great place for people to notice and keep aware of.

Keep your information up-to-date and accurate

If customers see a brand that is on top of its business, they are far more likely to be interested in what they have to sell. This is why it's so important that your website contains accurate information and is free of anything like grammatical errors or incorrect hyperlinks. Ensure you proofread every page and periodically check them – especially after making updates elsewhere on the website.

Factor in the speed of your website

If a website is slow loading, people are likely to leave and find something else – and this is something that's now factored into Google's search rankings. A website that is deemed 'slow loading' won't be favoured in a keyword search, damaging its opportunity to be seen by new audiences. You should make sure that your website is able to run smoothly by keeping its software up to date, optimising videos and images for quicker downloads and using a host that is able to handle your bandwidth requests.

Keep your website design simple

Another factor in a website's speed (as well as its attractiveness) is the design. You should limit the number of fonts, colours and GIFs as they potentially distract and pull a browser's eyes away from the main focus of your webpages. Short paragraphs and bullet points will make information more readable – increasing the time someone spends on your site. This 'dwell time' is another important factor in website rankings, so the design and layout can play a massive part in keeping customers interested while helping create new browsers via the search engine.

The importance of a call-to-action

Each page of your website needs to instruct the browser to do something. This is called a 'call-to-action' as it informs the user of what steps they can take after the information they've just processed. Landing pages are a good example of this – these are webpages that are designed to attract browsers for a specific reason. They might be interested in a sale you have on or some expertise you can offer them – the page will be geared towards what they're looking for but will also include an instruction of what to do next if they want more. This is where sales can be closed, so make your call-to-action the best it can be!

Create a personality

Brands should never be identikit – they should invoke a uniqueness that inspires people to want to buy into them. Having a personality for your brand is the best way to get across your levels of professionalism, expertise and quality – if customers have an insight into your business, your philosophy and how you can help them, they'll be moved to get involved.

An 'About Us' page is a great example of personality-building – this page should just not be a block of text about your company, it should contain photos of your team, your operations and list your achievements and aspirations. With this 'human face' to connect with, people are more likely to understand what you do and want to get involved (just make sure you place a call-to-action in there too!)

Incorporate SEO into your website

You may have the best-designed website in your industry, but it won't be good enough if people can't find it. While using advertising techniques such as PPC is a great way to direct browsers to your website, it is paid-for and not every brand will be able to afford the kind of budget needed in the long-term. Instead, SEO can offer a more cost-efficient way to drive organic traffic to your site.

When people search for information, they will go to a search engine – with Google being the dominant port-of-call. Most people won't go beyond the first couple of pages of a keyword search, so it's important to try and push your pages onto the first page of a Google search. Such a positioning will also add an air of authority too – telling your browsers that your company are one of the top brands in your field.

Search engines will use three factors to determine where your pages appear – crawling, indexing and ranking. Crawling means that Google finds your site through links that have been posted on other websites – so getting your pages linked elsewhere is important (this is why it's always a good idea to include blogging in your website – people are likely to read and share what you write about).

Once your site is discovered by Google's crawling bots, it is indexed – this means that the page will be analysed for content, including keywords, relevance, links and multimedia. Ensuring that you constantly post new content is important to keep your pages indexed for the keyword search you wish to rank for.

Finally, ranking is how search engines decide the best results for a given search – this is determined by relevance and authority. You should include plenty of relevant content on your site, such as individual articles on different aspects of a specific topic. Your site's authority is decided by the size of your site, its traffic and how many other (well-regarded) websites link to yours.

So those were our top tips on getting your brand's website noticed in 2022. Want to learn more? Then the team here at Advansys are on hand to answer your questions.

Improve your online brand with Advansys

Here at Advansys, we are an eCommerce web design and marketing company that has a wide and varied experience in providing SEO to a whole host of business operations. No matter your requirements – whether you need to promote your products/services in your local area, or if you need a new platform from which to sell, our team can help your business to establish itself in the online marketplace.

Feel free to browse our website to learn more about us and the services we offer – our portfolio contains a plethora of different website design and marketing work that has helped our clients to progress their online business.

If you would like further information on how we can help with your online brand, please feel free to give us a call on 0118 380 0201. Alternatively, you can send an e-mail to us at sales@advansys.com and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.