A company’s website is its digital shop window and the main point of communication between business and customer. That’s why it’s so important that your website performs as well as it possibly can. Here are four simple updates you can make to your website straight away to help drive business growth.

Add SSL encryption

If you haven’t heard of it, don’t worry - it’s not as complicated as it sounds. ‘Secure Sockets Layer encryption’ is a security process that establishes an encrypted link between web servers and browsers. It means all data that passes between the two is private, just like on Whatsapp.

This is crucial when transferring sensitive information like personally identifiable information on login and contact forms and credit card data on checkout pages.

As online-to-offline marketing platform BRIDGE explains, SSL encryption has other benefits, too. It’s good for SEO, business reputation and customer trust - encrypted sites display a padlock symbol or green browser bar giving visitors confidence they’ll be safe on your website.

The best thing about SSL encryption is the fact that it’s simple, quick and cheap to set up. A certificate is required to enable the encrypted connection and some hosts are now giving away SSL certificates for free. There are three steps you can take to add SSL to your website:

●     Some hosts offer free SSL certificates which include one-click SSL options to secure your sensitive information;

●     Many other hosts offer paid SSL which includes the SSL certificate and implementation on your behalf;

●     If you know your way around the online world then you can also generate your own free SSL certificate, although this is only an option for intermediate users.

However, you should know that there are also other types of SSL certificates. To name a few:

• The multi-domain certificate allows you to secure up to 200 domains with a single certificate.
• The wildcard certificate protects all the subdomains you may have, this is quite valid for situations where you have an app hosted in one subdomain, or you have an international website where each language is in a different subdomain.
• There is also the code signing certificate, to ensure that the applications have not been tampered with and that the user can download it with complete confidence.

Carry out a content audit

Is the content on your website truly effective? Does it reflect your brand ethos, give your customers useful, accurate information and is it built for SEO?

Start by reviewing the existing content on your website and finding opportunities for improvement. Look for gaps that you could fill - anything from product information to a blog post or a customer video. Review everything regularly, too - are your opening and closing times up-to-date? Are your contact details accurate? Make sure everything on your website is as current and complete as it possibly can be.

Here are a few simple steps to follow when completing a comprehensive content audit:

●     Step 1: Generate a list of all your existing content and include the URLs. If you have a relatively small website then you can do this yourself. Otherwise, you can use software like Screaming Frog, which will crawl 500 URLs for free.

●     Step 2: Examine how your content is performing. If there is a main keyword for a piece of content then see where this page ranks for this keyword. You can use Google Analytics to find out how much traffic the content is attracting, its ‘bounce rate’ (the proportion of traffic that navigates away from the site after viewing just that page) and the average time your visitors spend on that page.

●     Step 3: Perform a content gap analysis. Once you have a clear idea of which content is performing well and which isn’t, you can then examine your existing content critically to determine why this is and whether there are gaps in your content creation. You can then create a new content strategy based on your findings.

Find out who’s visiting your website

If you want to create content that appeals specifically to your target market then you need to know who your customers are. Use your own experience and market research to create a detailed list of everything you know about your target customer. For example:

○     How old are they?

○     What’s their occupation?

○     How much do they earn?

○     Where do they shop?

○     What are their pain points?

○     What problems do they want to solve?

You can then think carefully about whether the content you’ve created really speaks to this customer.

Alongside using Google Analytics to look at who’s visiting your website, you should also invest in deeper visitor tracking software to give you a much better understanding as to what’s happening across your pages.

From keywords used and time spent on site to pages viewed to traffic sources, visitor tracking can help you identify the areas of your website that are working and the areas that need definite improvement.

This can be an extremely valuable source of information that reveals bottlenecks and blockages you did not realise existed.

For example, you might have an extremely popular blog post that attracts high visitor numbers, but where are those visitors going once they’ve finished reading the blog? Are you directing them to other relevant blog posts and service pages, or are they simply leaving your site? Equally, are a high proportion of visitors leaving your contact page without completing an enquiry form? If so, why?

Add a store locator

If you’re a company with a lot of physical stores, adding a store locator to your website is the first thing you should do. It means your customers can find out exactly where their nearest store is, when it’s open and what they can buy there. Store locators are good for SEO and for driving online to offline sales - where a customer searches for something online but then buys it offline.

Adding a store locator to your site is a simple and cost-effective change that can bring a whole host of benefits. These include:

○     Driving footfall to your stores

○     Converting online traffic into offline sales

○     Allowing you to create local pages for each of your stores

○     Increasing brand awareness with location-specific offers and promotions

○     Providing the most accurate, relevant and up-to-date information

○     Increasing online traffic

○     Simplifying the customer journey

○     Improving search engine rankings for individual stores

There‘s no end to the improvements you can make to your website, and in fact, no matter how much tinkering you do, you’ll never find the perfect combination of buttons, call-to-actions, content or pages. However, these are four simple updates you can make to your online offering that will generate quick results and help your business grow.