If you’re a fellow business owner, you may have found yourself DIY’ing your website at one point. Don’t worry, I was there too.

But if you aren’t familiar with best practices for websites, you may be doing a few things that can hurt your traffic, SEO, and create a poor user experience.

That’s why I put together this blog post to help you!

Things to Include on Your Website

1. When building your website, make sure the navigation is easy to find for your users—on both desktop and mobile.
2. Have clear call to actions—tell your audience what you want them to do. Do you want them to book a call? Tell them!
3. Put keywords you know your ideal client—or want your ideal client—to search in your website copy. If you are a local artist and want people in your town to purchase art from you. Think about what they are searching. Put those words and phrases into your website copy.
4. Put links to other pages in your website. This ties into the clear call to actions, but internal links between pages encourages your visitor to stay on your site longer
5. Put your location in the footer of your website. This helps people know where you are located. Do you travel? Put that there too. That way it’s on every page.
6. Watch the spacing. Do not crowd the page with too much infromation.
7. Change the page titles of your website to include your location, your service and the page. For example “About | Portland Showit Designer” or “Contact Utah Wedding Photographer”
8. Make the most important information closer to the top of the website. So people can find it easily.
9. Add in testimonials! If you have raving reviews, or even one-liners of kind words, ADD THOSE!
10. Make sure you are using all the same colours, fonts and brand elements.

Those are just a few basic things to keep an eye out for when you are designing your website.

If you’re curious about other improvements you can make on your website, I offer website audits!

Website Audits

As a web designer, I am committed to continue learning best practices. I want to make sure that I’m following trends, and not setting my clients up for failure as I design their websites.

But, if you’re not ready to have a custom website made, that’s okay! I started offering these website audits earlier this year, to help serve you, my community. But also share relevant information to help you feel confident in your website.

Website audits work in two ways.

Hire Me for a 30–60 minute Session

We can review your website together in 30-minutes, or up to an hour. We can go page by page and you make edits as I walk you through them. Or if you have specific questions on how to improve something, or change something, this is a great option.

It’s your time to pick my brain and get a stellar website when we’re done.

Take the 15-minute Free Audit

The second option is me providing a high-level review of your website. This includes basic changes, best practices, and some tips to help you. This option isn’t as in-depth as above, but it’s filled with value. You receive a PDF and recorded video as I walk through your site.

Why Update Your Website?

These audits can help you improve upon your DIY website and ensure you are putting your best foot forward. Since the world is primarily focused on the digital age, your website is your version of a storefront. You want an attractive display, that will catch your ideal client’s eye, and want them to enter.

Not updating your website to include the best practices listed above is making it harder for your ideal client to click the book now button.

Taking care of your website is key. And you don’t have to have it all figured out in the beginning. Websites are fluid, so as long as you still use these best practices, you can update and edit your site as you grow.

If you’re interested in learning more about my audits, shoot me a message!