The end of a year always marks a good time for reflection as well as a race to tie up any loose ends, especially for businesses. Here are a few more to do’s to add to the list that will help your business and your website get ready for 2015.
Look at the past
December is a great month to review the year. Look into your SiteWit or Google Analytics to see if you can determine any seasonality in traffic to your website. Look at the months with highest traffic or had the most sales as well as the ones that didn’t. Take note of what happened during this time so that you can learn from the wins and failures. You’ll reference this in your plan for next year.
Review your website
Take a moment to look at all of the pages on your website. Check if there are any typos or inconsistencies in keywords. Are there any pages that you would like to add? Is it slow to load? Are the images too big or out-of-date? Does the content make sense and is it still relevant?
You also might want to fill out your contact forms to make sure they work or send to the right email address. You can even test buy a product to go through the lifecycle of what your customers see. Fortunately, with Yola, these edits and improvements are really easy to do in Sitebuilder.
Plan for 2015
Now that you’ve seen what worked and what didn’t for 2014. Start developing your plan for the next year. Set goals, such as increase profit on better performing months or try new promotions on underperforming months. You could also set a goal to start a blog or contribute to other blogs.
Or maybe, you want to drive more traffic and set time aside to optimize your site for keywords, using Traffic Builder (a search optimization tool available in Yola Gold).
Give thanks
Tell your best customers how happy and proud you are to have them supporting your business. You can send cards or give them a quick call. Giving thanks is often one of the best investments you can make. You can also thank employees and anyone else that help make your business a success.
This time of year is special for Yola as well, since many of our small business customers thank us for the services we offer. Messages like these really help drive our team to make better and better products for all of you.
Thanks for supporting Yola! Happy Holidays.
Thanks for sharing this content. I try to reflect all year long and change as I see fit but I never let analytics direct my actions because then I have to trust the word of someone other than me, who just might have their own reasons for tweaking the numbers. I try to go with what feels right creatively and what fits my lifestyle and those with similar interest while also offering informative content that would help us all to live more efficiently and learn something in the process.