Is Your Business Website Having a Mid-Life Crisis?

Has your previously successful and profitable website stopped being interesting to customers in the way it once was, despite trying ineffective ways to gain attention?

Do your blog posts and social updates seem a little tired, and without their normal flair, no matter how many colours or exclamation points you use? Are you no longer getting the leads and sales opportunities that you have become accustomed to over the past few years?

If so, it might be time to consider the possibility that your business website is having a mid-life crisis.

This is actually a bit more common than you might think. Although websites don’t technically get old, listless, or out of shape, they do have a tendency to stop showing the same kinds of returns if they aren’t kept fresh and interesting. Very often, there isn’t any one symptom you can put your finger on, but rather an overall sense that you should be getting more from your online presence, and that the rest of your industry is catching up with you a lot more quickly than they should.

Often, the real underlying problem is that your website and online marketing plan haven’t been refreshed in quite some time. That leaves customers uninterested in what you’re offering, it makes you bored with your own website, and it’s especially tough on measurable goals like lead generation. To put things another way, your website typically gets old because you let it get old.

There are steps you can take to turn things around, however, and they don’t involve any risky medication or even buying a new sports car. If you think that your business website is going through a mid-life crisis, here are a few things to try right away:

Find your biggest problems.

Begin by looking for what’s gone wrong. Have you changed something significant in your site lately? Or have you not changed anything in a very long time? Sometimes, common sense will show you where to pay attention first (like missing links or outdated site content). If it isn’t that obvious, dig into your analytics package.

Give your website a new look.

Regular readers of our blog will know that there is a lot more to the business website then the layout and design. However, if your site doesn’t look credible, interesting, and easy to navigate, you’re going to struggle to create sales opportunities. So, just like a balding man can help himself with a new wardrobe, consider giving your business website a facelift.

Get your marketing plan into shape.

Go back to the fundamentals and make sure that what you’re offering to customers is something that they actually want. It’s surprisingly common to see online marketing plans that are so mired down in the wrong details that the offers that are being made to potential customers and clients aren’t really of interest to them.

Remember that results are cumulative.

A lot of things in online marketing build atop one another. For instance, when you publish a great piece of content, people want to share it on their social profiles and link to it from their own blogs, which in turn boosts your search rankings and encourages you to publish even more great content. The bottom line is that you have to start somewhere and stick with the right plan until you see good things happening. Then, it’s just a matter of using your experience and insight to keep moving forward.

Websites don’t really get old, but they do get outdated, and so do the online marketing plans we promote them with. So, pay attention to what’s going on your site, learn to spot the signs of a rut, and then take the right steps to fix things before it’s too late.

Or, contact us today to talk over a cup of coffee and see how we can help!

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