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The Mid-Year Website Check-In: 3 Helpful Tools You Need to Know About

It’s officially July. WHAT is happening? 2020 is already halfway over, and the list of things I’ve accomplished this year is…well, underwhelming. I’m sure many of you would agree. Maybe you’re feeling distracted and unmotivated at work. Maybe the clients just aren’t rolling in like they used to and business is abnormally slow for you, or perhaps that long list of business goals you had in January just isn’t getting checked off and it’s leaving you feeling defeated. But you know what? We’re all navigating an extremely weird time in our lives and it’s okay to not be a super motivated go-getter right now. You can get back to that later when you’re allowed to go back into the world and do the things that make you happy again. 

When things get busy, promoting your business online can sometimes take a backseat to the client-facing tasks that monopolize your day; however, if things have slowed down for you lately, now is the perfect time to take a step back and check in on your brand. Performing a mid-year check-in and auditing your online presence is an excellent way to identify the areas in which you may be lacking and step up your game to bring in more business in this slower-than-normal season. 

Your website is a good place to start. After all, it’s the online home of your business. Everything you do to market your business online (posting to social media, running PPC ads on Google and Facebook, blogging, and the like) should be leading traffic back to your website. You want to make sure your website is functional, easy for your target consumers to navigate, and above all, a converting machine

Today, I’m giving you three amazing tools you can use to make sure your website is functioning the way it should be. 

(Note: If you don’t want to do a website check-in because you can’t stand looking at your site and are embarrassed to give your URL to potential clients, we can help. We can work together to design a website you’re proud of and love showing off! If you love your site already and just need to make sure it’s working for you, keep reading!)

Where are people going on my website?

Tool #1: Hotjar Heatmaps and Behavior Analytics

Website analytics can show you the numbers on where people are going on your website — but they often fall short when it comes to what people are actually doing while they’re there. Which calls to action are grabbing their attention? Which pages are they visiting and which ones are they ignoring? Understanding the moves people are making on your site helps you make more informed decisions when it’s time to redesign.

Hotjar can show you where people are clicking, how far they’re scrolling down your pages, where they’re dropping off, and more. You can get a free trial of Hotjar here and collect all the information you need to know about user behavior on your website.

Is my website mobile-friendly?

Tool #2: Google Mobile-Friendly Test

We can’t stress this enough: your website needs to be mobile-friendly. As of March of this year, 52% of overall web traffic comes from mobile phones. If your website is not functional and easy to navigate on mobile, you could be missing out on half of your potential customers. If you aren’t sure how your website is performing on mobile, try running your URL through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

This free tool shows you how easily a user can navigate your website on a mobile device. It gives you a screenshot of how a page on your website looks to Google on a mobile device, as well as a list of any mobile usability issues your site might have. It’s easy, too — all you have to do is paste your website URL into the tool and in less than a minute, you’ll have actionable steps you can take to make sure your website is optimized for mobile.

Am I using the right SEO keywords to make sure my website ranks highly on Google?

Tool #3: Google Keyword Planner

Conducting keyword research is crucial if you want to drive more traffic to your website — and who doesn’t want to do that? (Unless your website is cringeworthy. See note above). Fortunately, Google has a free keyword research tool that you can use to identify the right keywords to use in your website copy. 

Important tip: Google will try to get you to spend money and run an ad campaign in order to use this tool. If you aren’t ready for that yet, no worries! There’s a way around this: just click the “Experienced with Google Ads?” link underneath the three advertising goal options.

All you need to do is enter words or phrases related to your business, and a list of relevant keyword ideas will pop up. Save these keywords to a note on your computer or phone and incorporate them into your website copy, blog posts, and even image names when it feels natural to do so. It’s simple actions like these that make a big difference in your site’s SEO.

So, how’d you do?

Did these tools help you identify problem areas on your website? Did they inform you on what things you can change when you’re ready to take the next step and do a website redesign? Did they give you actionable steps you can take to boost SEO on your website? We hope so! Each of these things is very important to make sure your website is working for you. 

If it’s not, we can work together to help you design your website in a way that is mobile-friendly, a breeze for your customers to use, and ranks well on Google. Just get in touch with our team for a free consultation about your options. 

Are there any tools you’ve tried that were super helpful and informative? We’d love to talk about them! Leave us a comment below!