The 12 Days of Web Design Christmas

12/22/2011 4 min read Written by Lynton

With Christmas just around the corner, you're probably thinking of all the wonderful presents that you'll be unwrapping shortly.

Well, don't forget about your website! What gifts can you give to your website to spruce it up for the holiday season and beyond?

On the first day of Christmas, my webmaster gave to me: Revamped Content

Making sure your website content is updated and fresh is important to keep your rank up in the search engines. Also, by expanding your content and creating new pages (like when you blog), your site is expanding, which search engines LOVE.

On the second day of Christmas, my webmaster gave to me: Customer Testimonials

Customer testimonials and case studies give you instant credibility. They give your potential clients a look at what your customers have to say about you and the work you've done for them.

If you don't have any testimonials, reach out to your customer base. Ask them to say something about your products or services.

On the third day of Christmas, my webmaster gave to me: An Online Portfolio

Much like customer testimonials, an online portfolio of your work shows the world what you've done. It lets people window shop right on your website, and it helps them envision what you can do for them.

On the fourth day of Christmas, my webmaster gave to me: Social Media Integration

Is social media an important part of your site? It's important that your presence on social media sites is front and center -- at least the big ones like Twitter and Facebook. Depending on who your audience is, you may want to be on LinkedIn, too.

Can visitors share your content on these social networks? If you're not, you're missing out on free advertising!

On the fifth day of Christmas, my webmaster gave to me: An SEO Overhaul

When was the last time you did a little SEO maintenance on your site? A little bit of SEO work on your site will go a long way. Making sure that your page titles, keywords, and meta descriptions are implemented gives the search engines more to look for. If they are not working for you, update them!

On the sixth day of Christmas, my webmaster gave to me: A Blog

Do we even need to go into it again? Blogging has so many benefits. It expands the size of your site, which Google loves. It gives readers something to come back to your site for, and on and on. If you're not blogging yet, you should just shut down your website.

Are you a company that puts out a lot of press releases? Well then you need to get those archives on your site too! Put a News and Events feed up on your site to reap additional benefits.

On the seventh day of Christmas, my webmaster gave to me: Web Analytics

Do you know who uses your website and how they use it? Track your visitors all across your website, e-commerce shopping cart, or subdomains, and get educated! Google Analytics is free and easy to setup and install. It'll take you a few minutes to be up and running, and in no time you'll have incredible stats about your site. Wonder what pages cause you to lose the most visitors? With analytics you'd have that answer, and you could try a new design on that page to improve your stats.

On the eighth day of Christmas, my webmaster gave to me: A/B Testing

What is A/B testing? In short, it's a way to test two version of the same page. Does more copy work more often than less copy on a page? Does a blue "Buy Now" button work more than a red one? With A/B testing, you can let your visitors do that research for you. Over time, you'll have enough data to know which version works best for your site.

On the ninth day of Christmas, my webmaster gave to me: New Calls-to-Action

Do you have stale or out of date calls-to-action on your site? Update those bad boys! You should rotate your calls-to-action every few months to keep things fresh. New content (remember the first day of Christmas above?) and new graphics will help draw more people in.

On the tenth day of Christmas, my webmaster gave to me: Landing Pages

A landing page is a page on your website that is usually only accessible via a call-to-action, AdWords, email marketing, or some other kind of special link. The landing page is set up to convert visitors into leads or, better yet, customers. Use those lead generating forms on your landing pages to get valuable email addresses.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my webmaster gave to me: Lead Generating Forms

Are you tracking your leads? Who is coming to your site? Downloading your whitepapers? Knowing this information is powerful. You can then use that information to put those leads into email nurture programs.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my webmaster gave to me: Email Nurture Programs

Email nurture programs can do a lot of things for you. They can help nudge potential clients into that sale that they were thinking about or follow up with existing customers on new and exciting products or services or new ways to use them.

By implementing these elements into your site, you can ensure that you will be seeing more traffic, blog and social media subscribers, and conversions well into the new year.

And from our family at LyntonWeb to yours, have a wonderful and happy holiday season!

By: Lynton

Lynton is a HubSpot Elite Partner that provides certified knowledge and tools to grow your business through integrated inbound marketing, including lead generation strategies, website designs and development, and CRM integrations.

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