Is your website fit for purpose?

/in /by

Cosmic logoBy Pete Goff, Head of Web Development at Cosmic

At a time when face-to-face interactions are limited to 2-metre distances and people are staying at home, the online presence of your Social Enterprise takes on new importance. Therefore, now may be a good time to improve your website and enhance the user experience.

Whether your enterprise is involved in hospitality, leisure, retail or any number of industries, Covid-19 likely means that your shopfront and customer engagement has moved online.

There are many steps you can to take to maximise the value of your website, keeping customers, beneficiaries, funders and partners happy.

Here are some ideas:

  1. Adjusting your current website, to enable you to sell and take payments online, or deliver services remotely and virtually. Pivoting your business model and processes can be the key to thriving (or surviving) during times of difficulty.
  2. Reviewing the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) performance of your website. This reflects how highly search engines, such as Google, rank your website when people search for it. It is important that your site is visible to the right people – helping your to promote your service/product/cause to your target audience.
  3. Enhancing the visitor experience of your website, ensuring that the speed of loading, the ease of navigation and the enjoyment of the content are all as good as they can be. Does your site respond to different screen sizes, such as smartphones? (You can check here). Is it accessible for people with reduced sight? These are considerations you might need to take into account.
  4. Securing your website, to avoid risk of malicious attack, and to give confidence to your customers and visitors. Do you have an SSL certificate? This provides the “s” in “https”. Without one, Google can penalise your performance in searches, and many popular browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox will warn customers that your website may be unsafe to browse.
  5. Aspiring to reach new audiences, attract new customers, win business, promote new causes – this is what the correct online presence can help you with. There’s more to it than just having a website. You need to ensure that your site up to scratch (as above), but you also need to take advantage of other areas of Digital Marketing: use of social media, advertisements, mailing-lists, newsletters, blogging and content creation.

If you feel that you would like advice or support on any of the above issues, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us at Cosmic. We can provide you with training, technical IT support, digital consultancy, and website development. Helping our clients as much as we can in these troubling times is top of our agenda.

 

Cosmic is a Social Enterprise which specialises in digital skills training, digital consultancy, IT technical support and website development. It provides an innovative range of services and support to help people identify their Digital need and to progress with their ambitions.