The current guidelines on social distancing, closed offices and other public places, and the abrupt shift to working from home have had a daunting affect on all of us. Every aspect of American society and culture has been affected. Still, there’s a silver lining if you’re a business owner or IT manager with a web site to maintain and operate.
The fact is, now is the perfect time to tackle all those web dev tasks you can never find time to accomplish. This is your golden opportunity to optimize and modernize your web site. Seize this moment, and you can literally take your business to the next level. Here are the Top 5 ways you can do it while working from home.
# 1 – Clarify your short- and long-term game plan.
Sometimes the hardest part is just getting the time and space to think clearly about your business website. Working from home can provide you extra time previously eaten up by commuting. You also may find you’re better able to minimize interruptions working from home.
Use that time and space to review why you created your web site in the first place. Honestly evaluate whether you achieved your original design goals. Identify any changes to your business needs, to your customers’ needs, or new technologies that were developed since you launched your site. The digital universe evolves rapidly, and something somewhere almost certainly has changed in your business, in your customer base, or in available technology since you launched, even if it was as recently as six months ago.
Following is a common development pathway your business might follow as it evolves.
- Short-term goals: Optimize for organic traffic, to be found, to establish presence.
- Mid-term goals: Optimize to build brand, educate and engage visitors, generate leads, influence opinion.
- Long-term goals: Optimize to provide a service, for sales and e-commerce, to delight and retain customers, to manage brand perception and reputation.
Use your time working from home to review where you are in your web site’s evolution. Honestly evaluate whether you’re meeting your current business and customer needs and have the necessary technology to do so. And take the time while you have it to anticipate the moves you need to make today to meet your business and customer needs tomorrow. Following are several specific tasks to consider.
# 2 – Boost visibility in search results.
SEO is a big topic all by itself. Search algorithms change frequently, and you’re competing against an enormous number of players, many of whom have enormous budgets. There’s a good reason why some people specialize in search and do nothing else.
What’s more, the game is played differently these days compared to just a few years ago. It’s no longer the main goal to be the first entry in a list of search results. Instead, your job is to make your website visible and easily discoverable to people who want, need, and are actively looking for your product or service. “Getting found” was likely your main short-term goal the first day you launched your site. What you may not realize is that it also has been the most important long-term goal of your website ever since.
- When was the last time you optimized all your site content – product descriptions, website copy, blog posts, videos, podcasts, images, and more?
- Do you have definitive goals or targets for your search strategy?
- You do have an overall strategy, don’t you?
- Have you established specific metrics to gauge your progress?
- Do you make use of those metrics along with web visit and other analytics to inform future decisions about your content, site structure and user experience?
- Have you considered popular Yoast plug-ins to help manage search, video search, local search and news search for your WordPress-based website?
Then decide whether you, as chief entrepreneur and head visionary, are honestly the best choice to lead the search team, or your business would benefit from naming a dedicated SEO specialist.
#3 – Integrate video conferencing, meeting and appointment apps into your site.
The current public health crisis, office closings and social distancing are extreme examples of why you need to be prepared to “meet” coworkers, colleagues and customers on your website.
At a time when the public is officially advised to practice self-isolation, video conferencing is the only way for you and your staff to lay eyes on one another and establish a human connection.
But beyond office communication, videoconferencing is a powerful tool you can use to assure existing customers you’re still doing business as usual, keep conversations moving forward with prospective clients, perform customer service, serve product demonstrations, host or attend marketing or financial presentations, collaborate on IT projects and much more.
For IT workers in particular, telecommuting has become the preferred work arrangement. A recent report by Flexjobs shows that 4.7 million people now work from home, a 91% growth in remote work over the past decade. Allowing staffers to work from home is no longer just a nice perk you can dangle to attract a new hire. These days, it’s expected.
As for your marketing and sales funnel, think of an appointment app and videoconferencing as the last mile of a prospective client’s customer journey. They discovered your website via search, they find your content useful, they’ve crawled your blog, downloaded a white paper, perhaps watched a few videos and listened to a podcast or two. They’ve pursued your product or service this far, why not make it easy for them to walk right into your business and book a face-to-face meeting?
And finally, when every mobile and laptop device on the market comes pre-configured with it’s own scheduling and videoconferencing apps, can your business and website afford not to operate in the same space as your customers and competitors?