Are you looking for ways to boost your online presence because the COVID-19 pandemic has compelled you to do so? Perhaps, you're an organization that wants to refresh your digital makeup.
In either case, a digital makeover can be just what you need.
A digital makeover means shaping your online presence so that it's internet ready. Standing out from your competition in the digital world and winning over customers can be challenging and precarious tasks. It's important to be aware of some best practices to help you improve the way you communicate and how you appear to your audience.
This article will cover ways to give your business a digital makeover if you're moving from offsite to onsite activities and if you want to find ways to improve your existing setup. Let's get started!
1. Update your website.
Your website is the face you show the world. The saying about first impressions being the last ones is never more true than for websites. People will leave your website as soon as they land on it for any number of reasons. For example, if it's poorly designed, if it takes too long to load, or it fails to tell your audience everything they need to know about you in three seconds.
Getting customers to stay on your site and explore it is a challenging task but a very important one. Here are a few things to consider so that you're making the best impression the first time around.
2. Build a cohesive brand identity.
It's important to create visual elements for your brand and your website that imbue a sense of professionalism. You want to beautify your website and ensure that it has a modern and functional appearance.
Work with a good web design and UX professional to make sure that your website is appealing and intuitive. You need to make important decisions regarding color, font, logo, stylings, and much more at the very beginning, and to craft your brand image around these elements.
Consider the kind of emotions you want to create as well as the industry you're in. If you're a "green" company, then it's evident that green hues, "friendly" fonts and other elements must reflect your core belief.
If you dislike coding and can't work with a professional for any reason, then a great option is to use a content management system like WordPress. There are premium themes and plugins that will make creating an attractive site easy.
3. Add SEO.
When creating content, it's important to do research and understand what your audience is looking for. Understanding their intention will help you create content that's relevant to them and that will also get picked up by search engines.
SEO ensures that you build content that generates traffic over time since it offers information for problems that people will keep asking about. Use free tools, like those available from Google Ads, or try premium SEO tools that provide in-depth data. It's also important to add analytics to your website to understand who's visiting your site and the keywords they're using to get there.
4. Create quality content.
Building quality content incorporates SEO, but it also considers the best way to present information that helps users and appeals to them.
Writing practices that may win literary awards will do poorly to drive conversions. Here are a few tips to boost your content writing:
- Use conversational language in your copy. Keep sentences short, and use simple, easy-to-understand words.
- Create short paragraphs of three to four lines.
- Use headings, bullets and other elements to structure your content.
- Add power words that are known to get the best results to drive conversions and lead generation.
These are some of the elements that you need to manage well to boost your website's appearance. It's also essential to have good navigation, and to use the principles of UX and UI to build your site. These changes take some effort, but their impact is long-lasting. You'll create the best foundation for your business and will only need to focus on looking after your customers.
5. Add your business to listings.
Adding your business to company listings is an important way to boost your SEO and to tell people that you exist.
Today, the first thing a person does to find solutions is to look for information online, usually on their mobile phones. You could have a customer a block or a click, and you won't be able to reach them unless you make yourself findable.
There are several places you can add listing information:
- Google My Business
- Local online business listings
- Facebook (by creating a page for your business)
When creating your listings, add helpful information about the services you offer, your business address, phone number and other helpful details. Such information will ensure that you appear as a result of relevant user searches.
6. Share videos on social media.
With over 3.2 billion social media users, it's obvious that you need to have an active presence on social media.
But what you need to focus on is getting more videos out on your pages. Today, there are around 5.13% mobile owners in the world, and most content consumed will be on a phone screen. While convenient, mobile screens are taxing to read on. Videos are easier to consume, they are a lot more engaging, and they're great for mobile screens.
This is your cue to get serious about creating videos and using formats that are appealing to your audience. Especially millennials and Gen Zers.
Social media stories are a powerful way for you to connect with your audience. It allows for more "freestyle" content that's easy and affordable to make. And you can build emotional reactions by using elements like emojis, text, GIFs and more.
Stories last 24 hours and are a great way to promote time-restricted offers. Also, make use of live videos and webinars as a way to engage with your audience and give on-the-spot offers such as discounts.
7. Create an online community.
Building an online community can give your business a boost by showcasing social proof. Social proof is where the presence and activities of other people indicate that your business must be reliable. The thought process you can create in your audience is "If other people are working with this business, then it's probably good for me too."
You can build an online community for free or by setting up your own portal. Create a closed Facebook or LinkedIn group to encourage discussions and to help people connect.
A membership site on your business, however, allows you to brand your membership space, create an email list and drive more traffic to your website.
Building a community helps your business stand out, since you're creating a sense of belongingness and affiliation. It can help your audience connect with your brand and develop positive responses to your communication.
A community is also a form of support for customers; they can get questions answered by their peers. It can help people network, and it can be a resource for useful information and lively discussions.
Building a community can significantly improve your digital makeup or appearance and should be a priority from the start.
8. Optimize for mobile.
One of the most important steps you can take is to ensure that all your mobile platforms are optimized to create the best mobile experience.
For many, your mobile site is the first place that people will encounter your brand. Remember to:
- Make a mobile responsive site by using responsive themes.
- Create navigation that's intuitive .
- Prioritize your content so that you feature the most important content first. Content prioritization ensures that your visitors aren't overwhelmed, and they find it easy to understand information on your site,
- Use large font and appropriate colors that are easy to view on a tiny screen,
Add videos and you're on your way making a solid mobile-friendly brand strategy.
9. Create a persona.
Today, it's all about connecting with your audience. But how do you make a brand personable? There's a not-so-subtle clue in that last phrase.
You can create a persona by managing your brand identity, i.e., the colors, images, fonts and other design elements of your business. It has a strong influence on how people perceive your brand.
Next, build your brand voice so that it is consistent across platforms. Using a conversational tone makes the best sense because it makes your content easy to read and makes people feel like a real person is talking to them. Make sure that you have style guidelines in place that allow multiple writers to maintain the same tone and voice.
Consider using a real person in your content. When you feature the founder or a representative in your hero images, videos and other important spots, you give your brand a "face" that people will remember.
It helps them to associate a business entity with someone real, removing any sense of ambiguity and reducing distrust. There are several aspects that go into building a brand persona, and when you look at it from the different angles mentioned here, you'll create one that's fleshed out and relatable.
Conclusion
There's a great deal that goes into a digital makeover for a business. Sometimes, it can be as much work as creating a whole business and setting your operations in place.
Enhancing your digital makeup will determine how your audience interacts with you. It's the foundation of your business success and something that needs to be carefully crafted. We've looked at several helpful tips to give your business a digital makeover. Apply them and help your business take off.