Free Website Wellness Check-Up: Is Your Site Working For You?
So, you’re wondering whether or not your website needs some upgrading, huh? You have come to the best place for your Website Wellness Check-up!
Well, consider this your warm Showit welcome to our Website Health Series: a 10-part blog series where you’ll learn every single thing you need to know about creating the best possible website for your brand.
And not only are we teaching you everything it takes to build a high-converting website, we’re also teaching you how to build lasting relationships with your ideal clients and customers, so your business can continue to thrive long after your website’s work is done!
Throughout the next 10 posts, we’re going over…
- How to tell if your website needs upgrading (This is the post you’re reading now)
- What you need to know about brand strategy before making a website
- The 9 biggest website mistakes to avoid
- Easy ways to get organically discovered online using SEO
- How to write website copy that people will actually want to read
- How design can make or break your website’s performance
- Why user experience matters & how to convert readers into buyers
- How to leverage blogging to attract your ideal audience
- The best ways to capture interest and build relationships with your readers
- Everything you need to know about content strategy
So, what do you say—are you ready to kick things off with that website audit or what?!
Why bother even having a website in the first place?
In a world where ten-second videos and tiny squares take up the majority of our attention, is it even worth it to have a website at all?
YES. Yes, yes, a million times yes. And we’re going to tell you why.
Having a website is 100% necessary as a business owner, founder, creative, or personal brand of any kind, for lots of reasons:
⭐️ Your website acts as your brand’s digital home, where every piece of information about your brand lives.
Let’s say your best friend just found someone with the exact problem your business was created for! They want to know about who you are, what you do, and who you do. All of that conveniently lives right there on your domain, ready for those dream clients + customers to find you, virtually fall in love with you, and inquire about working with you, purchase from you, or learn from you.
⭐️ It allows you to be in complete control of your story; you get to be in charge of how your prospective clients and customers view you.
Do you know how cool (and important!) that is?
Being able to control the narrative—to strategically shape your readers’ first impressions of you—is a huge benefit of having a website.
It’s extremely powerful, helpful, and necessary to be able to tell your brand’s story the way you want people to perceive it, so you can ensure you’re attracting the right type of people.
Social media only lets you create within their platform’s limits, but on your own website, the sky’s the limit for what you can make, say, and do. (Especially with a website builder like ours!)
⭐️ You are the sole owner of your site.
Not to be grim, but… in a single moment’s notice, your favorite social media platform could be gone in the blink of an eye!
We’ve seen it happen time and time again with apps of all kinds.
It happens like this: one day, everything is fine, creators using the app like they always do, experiencing growth on the platform. Say, for example, amassing millions of views with their short-form comedy videos.
The next? The app unexpectedly shuts down, and the creators are left to fend for themselves—AKA: learn a new platform and try to build up their instantly dwindled audience.
This is why ownership matters. You don’t own your social media platforms, but you DO own your domain—and that’s a precious piece of internet real estate that every brand should have.
⭐️ Your website works for you around the clock.
You’ve heard the saying “work smarter, not harder,” haven’t you?! That’s exactly what having a website allows you to do.
If you solely focused on social media, you’d have to be consistently “showing up.” How exhausting. You’d be spending hours upon hours every single day, week, month, year posting stories, publishing Reels and TikToks, fiddling with your feed to make it look perfect, engaging in comments, caring about hashtags, prioritizing your content creation…sigh.
And, sure, all of those tasks pay off—we understand the power of social media; we’re not advocating for you to delete your Instagram for good—but at what cost?
How much time do you spend curating, editing, producing, publishing, and engaging on your social media?
Or, better question: how much time would you save if you didn’t HAVE to RELY on social media? How else could you spend your valuable time?
⭐️ Your discoverability drastically increases with a website.
There are billions of searches happening on the Internet every single second, which means your opportunity to be discovered is endless—but you can’t say the same about social media.
Optimizing your social media profiles to be found by the right people often ends with a frustrating fight against an impossible-to-figure-out algorithm, leaving you discouraged about how little return you’re getting on your tiring efforts to please a platform that doesn’t prioritize you.
What can a healthy website do for you?
Oh, only a million positive things that will help you exponentially grow your business, like:
- Attract aligned clients and customers
- Earn you more revenue (people can make a purchase *right there* on your site)
- Get you booked and busy (busy enjoying a latte and some well-deserved free time, that is!)
- Convert views into actual sales (no more ghost followers for you!)
- Increase your overall online visibility
- Continue to build trustworthiness and credibility for the benefit of your perspective audience
Now that we’re on the same page about how much a website benefits your brand, let’s talk about what earns a website a spot in the “great” category.
How do you know your website needs an upgrade? (Is your site working for you?)
Simply having a website isn’t enough to earn you all of those awesome aforementioned benefits, though. But having a website that WORKS? Now, that’s a different story.
To help you determine whether or not your website needs an upgrade, take this quick quiz.
→ Do you get inquiries from your ideal clients?
→ Are any of those leads coming from Google?
→ Does your website reflect you and your brand’s brand’s best self?
→ Every month do you feel like you are on a vicious cycle of searching for clients?
→ Is your website intuitive and users can easily navigate your site?
→ Feeling like you’re constantly answering your readers’ questions, wasting both your time and theirs?
→ How fast does your site load? Does your website load quickly enough?
→ Is there a way for your reader to reach out to you on each page? (Have you included enough calls to action?)
→ Do you know if your site is secure and protected against potential threats or vulnerabilities?
→ Is your website easy to navigate working and bringing in the results you want?
If you answered “no” to any of these questions—it’s definitely time for a website upgrade. And we want to help you make it happen.
So, how do you give your website that upgrade?
A website wellness check-up is not a one and done. You have to stay on top of your site to ensure you are attracting your dream client. So how do you do that? By making sure it has all the qualities that make a website great.
#1 – On-brand custom design.
The first thing your website’s viewers will notice when they visit your site is the aesthetic. They’ll instantly be attracted to how it looks, and the site design will drastically impact their initial choice to stay and continue to scroll.
You could have the best website copy, the most gorgeous images, but if your website design doesn’t appeal to your ideal audience, well… they’ll be X-ing out before they’ve even given you a chance to prove how worthy you are of their attention.
#2 – Unmatched user experience.
The second-most important thing to consider when creating a great website is the ease of your user’s experience.
No one wants to be confused looking through a new website for the first time; they want to be able to effortlessly scroll through, click around, and find the information they’re looking for within seconds.
#3 – Easy to maintain.
As we mentioned above, OWNERSHIP is one of the best parts about having a website at all—so there’s nothing worse than not feeling empowered to update, customize, or improve your website on your own.
When selecting a website hosting platform, or website design template, make sure you feel 100% confident that you’ll be able to use it without getting overwhelmed.
Select a platform designed specifically for creative business owners like you; one that doesn’t require you to learn how to code, and gives you the freedom to create your website just the way you want it.
(Side note, HI—if you’re looking for a website builder that lets you make ALL of your website design dreams come true, Showit gives you complete control. Check us out here!)
#4 – Optimized for SEO & Google search results.
The best websites are the ones that are easy for your ideal clients to find. Putting effort into your SEO strategy will ensure that your people make it to your site. Are your analytics connected and gathering info?
#5 – Filled with personality.
No one wants to read a website that doesn’t immediately capture their interest. With engaging website copy, you’ll automatically encourage your readers to want to keep scrolling—and, by the time they’re done reading, to want to buy, too.
And, lastly…
#6 – your readers are taking your desired action.
AKA: Is your website WORKING FOR YOU?
Is Your Website Working for You?
When your website is doing the hard work for you, it’s EASY for your readers to take the actions you’re hoping they’ll take. Your visitors should easily be able to:
- Signing up for your email list
- Inquiring about working with you
- Booking you directly through your website
- Purchasing your online course
- Following you on social media
- Downloading your lead magnet
- Enrolling in your membership program
If your website viewers are regularly doing the thing you’re hoping they’ll do, that’s a surefire sign that your site is pulling its weight.
Website Update Checklist
Wondering if yours fits the bill? Yeah, we thought you might be—so we’ve created a quick Website Update Checklist for you, to help you determine whether or not you’re getting results from your website’s visitors.
Now, for the million-dollar question: HOW do you implement these tips for YOUR website?!
If you just read through those 6 line items that make a website “so great” and thought, “cool, but… HOW, exactly, do I make that happen on MY site?!” – we can’t wait to tell you.
Throughout the next 9 blog posts of this 10-part series, we’re going over everything that makes a website great—and what to do once your website has done its job, and it’s time for you to continue your relationship with your readers.
In Part 2, we’re bringing it back to the most vital thing you need to develop BEFORE making your website: brand strategy.
We hope you’ll join us there!
Read the series:
2. What To Know About Brand Strategy Before Making Your Website
3. Avoid These 9 Website Mistakes to Improve Conversion
4. How to Easily Master SEO (Without Getting Too Techy)
5. Website Copy Checklist: How to DIY Your Website Copy
6. How Can Design Make Or Break Your Website? [Our Best Tips!]
7. 6 Ways To Convert Website Traffic Into Customers: Why User Experience Matters
8. 6 Reasons To Start Blogging Now (And See The Customers Roll In)
9. Don’t Waste Their Interest: 5 Ways to Keep Visitors Engaged After They Browse Your Site
10. Everything You Need To Know About Content Strategy
