Dated Website? Consider a Facelift

As websites have moved toward responsive design, many of my clients are confronting the harsh realities of creating new websites. In many cases, these sites have content that is no longer representative of their businesses. Their images are irrelevant, often small thumbnails, the navigation clumsy. But starting from scratch and building a new website is always a major initiative; it can be expensive and time-consuming.

Happily, there may be a relatively simple solution

If your site was built in WordPress, in many cases we can simply apply a new design template to the existing site that can achieve a complete transformation. I just finished a project that included this kind of facelift, giving a website a new lease on life and dramatically extending its shelf life.

The client is a husband-and-wife team of smart, savvy business brokers with 50+ years of collective industry experience and a high customer-service ethic. They had a canned website—the vendor provides content and infrastructure, but gives them a lot of latitude for customization. The content feed is very good, but my clients have never taken advantage of it (the last post was in 2013) or done much customization.

Their old site was becoming a liability

My clients are not marketing people, and they launched their site without really giving much thought to SEO, their marketing presence or how the site would look to a prospective client. They were relieved to get the site launched and be able to put their business broker hats back on. 

But now they recognized that their site was becoming a liability; they were missing opportunities to generate new leads, and they asked me to help them update it. This was a simple project, and happily, some easy changes have made a dramatic difference. It showcases my clients as industry experts, has good navigation and increased SEO value.

We made changes that help showcase their industry expertise

• Identified lively new images that are representative of their potential clients and updated the homepage slider, adding visual appeal and energy to their site.
• Rewrote their bios to showcase their wide range of experience, using their keywords throughout.
• Developed case studies that showcase my clients’ high level of customer service and expertise negotiating leases, dealing with government agencies, performing market analyses and business valuations.
• Updated testimonial page so endorsements are fully fleshed out and attractively displayed on the page.
• Turned name of company into a logo/tagline with use of a more stylish font, creating a more distinctive marketing presence.
• Fleshed out Yoast plugin on backend to increase SEO value.
• Added calls to action on all of their personal pages, making it easy for a user to contact them for more information.

None of these efforts by itself was complex, difficult or time-consuming, but collectively, they helped update a website that was uncompetitive. If your sit is not generating leads, rather than a whole new site, this kind of makeover might be a solution for you. 

Contact us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re SEO and content marketing experts.

New WordPress Theme Streamlines Website Makeover

Websites have a shelf life. I’ve been busy with other people’s sites and neglected my own—pretty common for people in my industry. It had been four years, and while my site was built in responsive design, ensuring it would adapt across all devices, and I’d updated the content and consistently posted my weekly blogpost, the overall design was dated and stale.

Applying a new WordPress theme to the old site streamlined my project

For my site, rather than starting from scratch and building an entirely new site, I engineered a makeover–a facelift of my old site, which dramatically streamlined the project. The site was in WordPress, which has more than 2,000 themes, or templates. We identified a new theme that was modern but not too trendy, and applied it to my existing site. This was a fairly seamless process, requiring only some minor tweaking and a little customization. This was infinitely easier than starting from scratch with a new WordPress theme and building a new website.

New landing pages and images

I added three new landing pages under the Services tab and identified vibrant new images for every page, which went a long way toward upgrading the site’s visual impact. I also gave my logo a little refresh. We ported over all of my blogs—more than 250, believe it or not—and these required very little adjustment.

Areas for messaging or to showcase what’s going on in your company

One great feature of many of the new site designs is the areas for messaging or calls to action. My site design includes four tiles across the bottom where we can upload an image and a brief sentence—these are great for calling attention to events, new products, new blogposts, etc. Since I want to call attention to my 250+ blogs (!), I’ve added an image, a sentence and a link to four blogs. On the homepage, there’s also a banner that I can swap out, which I will likely also use to showcase a blog.

The result: For all intents and purposes, a new website

A new look and feel. Updated content. High-quality images. Today’s sites are simpler, there’s less drilldown and menus have collapsed. Today’s new website designs are slicker with more opportunities for messaging and calls to action. I’m delighted with the visual impact and the new functionality of my new website.

Is your WordPress website dated, no longer reflective of the company you are today? Contact us at Top of Mind Marketing today to talk about a makeover! We’re internet marketing specialists.

Case Study: A New Website for UpValley Notary

Bill Ryan lives in St. Helena, and like many people in the area, he came to the Napa Valley to work in the wine industry. Bill relocated from Rhode Island some 40 years ago, when there were fewer than 20 wineries, compared to more than 400 today. As the sales and marketing director for Beringer Winery, he helped grow the premium wine’s international footprint for more than 20 years.

As a mobile notary, he needed a web presence

Bill’s retired now, but he’s always busy. He fishes whenever he can and writes a fishing weekly column for the Napa Valley Register and another for St. Helena Star. He also has a little mobile notary business serving the towns of the Napa Valley—St. Helena, Angwin, Napa, Calistoga and Yountville. He’s not interested in being swamped, but he enjoys growing his business, interacting with his clients and meeting new people. Bill wanted a simple website—nothing elaborate–what can you say about meeting someone at his/her home or office to sign documents, after all? But if you’re in business these days, you need a web presence.

We discussed a few options and decided on Gutensite

I’ve build a couple of websites in this platform before, and was delighted with the results. The technology is responsive design and looks great across devices. It’s modular; the pages, such as blogs and testimonials, are autoformatted so they turn out looking polished and professional. I’ve tried using the so-called DIY, WISYWIG platforms like Wix and SquareSpace—they’re supposed to be easy and foolproof. I’m fairly savvy–I’ve worked in WordPress for years, but I think these applications are confusing, and I would never tackle a WordPress site on my own. Gutensite is very easy to use, and here’s the really great part: they have a responsive, courteous technical-support team who’s there for you to work through the small details that would completely sabotage you in other applications. Best of all, for a simple website, Gutensite’s price is hard to beat: $15/month, including hosting.

Do you really need WordPress’ 2,000+ themes?

The number of themes doesn’t compare to WordPress’ 2,000 themes, but if you look carefully, you will realize that each design distinguishes itself, providing significant options. By adding your own images, logo and text, you are going a long way towards customizing your theme. For those who need more functionality, Gutensite has more robust packages and also provides customized solutions.

For Bill’s site, we decided on just four landing pages

Home, About Bill, What to Expect from a Notary and Contact. I tried to sneak in a couple of modules at the bottom that would provide extra calls to action, but Bill wasn’t interested. He wanted to keep this simple, with just the relevant information. We purchased the domain name from GoDaddy, UpValleyNotaryontheGo.com and I easily managed the domain name transfer myself. I filled out fields for keywords and metadescriptions, made a few last-minute adjustments, uploaded Bill’s new headshot and we were live.

I literally created this site in a matter of hours. It helped that I had used Gutensite before, and I ran into a few issues where I had to reach out to tech support, but the process was seamless. Best of all, Bill now has a terrific new website.

Next up: I’m creating another Gutensite website for a retired banker who is a woodworker. He builds stunning customized tables for his clients. In addition to writing content and building the site, I’m going to manage a photoshoot to get professional images of his work that will flesh out the gallery section of his website. I can’t wait to get started.

Are you interested in a new Gutensite website?

Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing–we’re writers and internet marketing experts.