Website tips during Covid-19

19.04.2020
Web Design

Facing what is an unpredictable global market place has been a tough challenge to navigate during Covid-19. Consumer shopping habits are changing, with the move to online shopping increasing significantly. As a result, many B2C companies are turning to ecommerce and other online solutions to retain some sort of business continuity.

If you find yourself in a similar position, now is probably the time to make some small but effective changes in your marketing strategy, particularly in the optimization of your website.

 

1. Make website performance a priority

For anyone operating an ecommerce store today, website performance is of utmost importance, especially the speed at which pages load. Conversion rates will likely take a hit if online shoppers are faced with pages that load too slowly as they’ll simply leave your site in frustration and take their business somewhere else.

In addition, site speed also serves as a criteria in how your rank in SERP’s, and you’ll be penalized if your site performs below par.

“Google and other search engines penalize sites that load slowly—but more importantly, so do users. They stop visiting, bounce, and don’t buy. You’ll lose out on sales and traffic if your site loads slowly.” Neil Patel

In case that didn’t convince you, let’s take a look at some stats by thinkingwithgoogle.com:

 

A few things to look at to improve site speed:

  1. Clear up your redirects
  2. Optimize images, enable compression
  3. Use browser caching
  4. Optimize your code (HTML, JavaScript, CSS)

 

2. Focus on retention

It stands to reason that customer acquisition levels during this pandemic will suffer. So instead, focus on the ways that you can retain the customers you already have. Strategize on the type of content that you can produce that will show your customers that you care about the difficulties they are facing. Use your website to communicate what you are doing as a business to continue providing the services or products you offer, and talk about the ways that you can help your clients survive this tumultuous period.

Aside from your website, consider using video conferencing tools to stay connected to your customers – this is key in managing your client relationships during this period of social distancing and remote working.
Remember, people will remember you for how you tried to help them keep operational, not for what you tried to sell them.

Some of the different types of content worth considering:

  1. Blogs
  2. Videos
  3. Infographics
  4. How To guides
  5. E-books

 

3. Add pop-ups announcements

Use onsite pop-ups to let people know what’s changed for your business during COVID-19 (operations, business hours, etc.) whether you are experiencing any delays in terms of shipping, to communicate any special offers, etc. Messages can be created for specific customer segments, be these new visitors to your site, existing customers or those that have purchased products or services from you and have queries they need feedback on.

 

4. Keep your SEO game strong

Now more than ever, you want customers to be able to find you online. So keep focused on your SEO strategy to maintain your search rankings. Even if you don’t reap the awards immediately, you may see gains post-pandemic, when people are more inclined to start spending again.

 

Contact us and let our team of designers and developers help you build or transform your website into beautiful, fully responsive site that converts.