Sandy Donaldson at the Donaldson Resources blog offers 3 telling clues for you to investigate that will tell you if you need to update your website:
- Bounce Rate
Take a close look at the bounce rate (how many one page visitors) – if it’s greater than 30% then you may be driving the wrong audience to your website, or the message on the page doesn’t match what the visitor was looking for. - Most Popular Pages
Look at the pages that are getting the most traffic – if your primary marketing pages (products/services) are not getting the traffic then it may be time to look more closely at the navigational structure of your site. Is it easy to follow – does it intuitively take the visitor to the most important pages? - Call to Action Elements
When a visitor lands on a page in your website what action to you hope to see this visitor take – call the office – fill out a request for quote – download a brochure/report – fill out the contact form – visit your locations page – look at other services or products – buy something? Do your most popular pages have prominent “Call to Action” elements on each page driving visitors to these next steps?
I’d like to add a 4th: If your website is still in frames or you don’t have an easy to update content management system that makes posting almost as easy as posting a blog article or sending an email, you really need to consider doing an update.
