Full Transcript
[0:00]
Welcome to the 805 Web Minute. And today we're talking about why the quiet holiday season is the absolute best time to refresh your small business website. Exactly. It's this little window of opportunity that most businesses, you know, they just let it slide by. Right. I think a lot of people see that post-Christmas slowdown is something to dread. But it's really a golden opportunity, isn't it? It's a chance to make these small fixes that guarantee you hit the ground running when January brings in a whole new wave of customers. That's the perfect way to put it. It's a gift of time. Time to tackle all those little updates. You're way too busy to even think about during the rush. And these aren't huge expensive overholes we're talking about. These are the small things that have a surprisingly big impact on trust. A massive impact. We were looking at a study and the number is just staggering. It showed that 75% of consumers have actually skipped a purchase. Okay. Not because a future was missing or the price was wrong, but simply because the website looked outdated. Wait, hold on. Three out of four people will leave just because the site looks old. Not because something is actually broken. Yep. It's not about function. It's about perception. An old date, a broken link, a photo from 2019. It all creates the sense of unease. It's a crisis of trust, really. So the goal here to focus on these practical, almost afternoon-sized updates that end up paying off all year by making you look credible and trustworthy. Exactly. You want to build that trust from the second they land on your page. All right. So let's start with the absolute foundation. The things that are so obvious, they're somehow the most overlooked. I'm talking about contact information and business hours. Oh, this is ground zero for customer frustration. After the holidays, everyone's hours are a little bit different. You have to make sure your regular hours are correct. And any specific January closures, right? Like for New Year's or MLK day. Yeah. And then double checking the basics phone number, email, the physical address on the map. But the number one thing, and I mean, the absolute most crucial step is you have to test your own contact form.
[2:00]
Yes. So many people miss this. Send a message to yourself. You have to. Because if that form is broken, you are literally invisible to new customers. They're reaching out and their message is just going into the void. And the penalty for that is it's immediate. When people can't reach you, they don't try again. They just call your competitor. The data on this is brutal. Something like 88% of users will not come back to a website after just one bad experience. One time. That's it. A wrong phone number, a broken form, and you've lost them for good. It's a pivot, not a pause. They just move on. OK. Let's talk about another one of those tiny things that just screams, stale the copyright date in the footer of the website. Ah, the copyright clue. It's my favorite. It's so small, but it says so much. You would be shocked. Nearly a third of websites are still showing the previous year's date well into the New Year. And the psychological impact is so much bigger than you'd think, right? If it's 2026 and your footer says 2025, your brain just immediately wonders, has anyone touched this site in a year? Are they even still in business? It suggests the whole operation might be on autopilot or worse abandoned. And there are other dead giveaways too, aren't there? Still having a happy holidays banner up on the homepage in mid-January? That's a big one. Or removing references to coming soon features that clearly never arrived. Or updating the team page. Getting rid of photos and bios for people who don't even work there anymore. It all adds up to a picture of whether or not someone is actively minding the store. That's the perfect phrase for it. OK, let's shift gears to hunting down the more technical stuff, the digital roadblocks that can hurt your visibility with Google. Let's start with broken links. The dreaded 404 error. This happens when you link to a page that got deleted or maybe an external resource that went away. And it is way more common than people think. I saw a stat on this that blew my mind. Something like 42% of all websites have at least one broken link. 42%. So it's basically a coin flip, whether a given site has dead ends.
[4:03]
And beyond just being annoying for a user, it really hurts your search visibility. Right. Because to Google, it just makes the site look abandoned. Exactly. And it hurts you in the rankings. Sites that have broken internal links see, on average, a 21% drop in their organic traffic. 21%. That's huge. It is. And if more than just 1% of your links are broken, your site becomes 30% less likely to even show up on Google's first page. So just by having a few dead links, you're essentially telling Google not to show you to potential customers. You're voluntarily taking yourself out of the running. But the good news is that fixing them has a real payoff. Oh, a huge payoff. The data shows that just cleaning up your broken links can boost your rankings by up to 15%. It's probably the easiest SEO when you can get. And it's not that hard to check, right? Business owners can just click through their main navigation or use one of those free online tools. A simple check, yeah. It takes an afternoon, maybe. All right, the other big roadblock site speed. This one feels like the ultimate test of a modern website. It really is. And here's a challenge for everyone listening. Test your own site, but do it on your phone using cellular data. Don't use your fast Wi-Fi at home. See how it really performs out in the wild. Because that's where the judgment happens. And there's what's called the mobile cliff. The mobile cliff is brutal. 53% of mobile visitors will leave to subband in your site if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Three seconds. You lose more than half your audience before they've even seen what you do. Instantly. And it gets worse from there. For every single additional second it takes to load, your conversion rate drops by about 4.4%. So a six second load time isn't just slow. It's actively costing you almost 20% of your potential sales. It's a silent conversion killer. So what are the main culprits here? If someone runs a test on a tool like Google PageDead Insights, what are the jargon-free reasons their site is slow? It almost always comes down to four things. Number one, by a long shot, is images that are way too big.
[6:07]
You mean the file size, right? Someone uploaded a photo straight from a fancy camera. Exactly. It's a huge file, but it only shows up as a small image on the screen. It's just wasted data. Second is too many unused gadgets or features, old plug-ins, widgets, that kind of thing. Digital clutter. OK, that makes sense. What's number three? Cheap hosting. Your hosting plan can't handle a lot of visitors at once, so it slows to a crawl during busy times. And fourth is any video that starts playing automatically. Oh, that's a big one. It forces the browser to do a ton of work right away. Right. Fix those four things, and you've solved 90% of speed issues. This all ties back into a bigger theme, which is making sure your website actually matches the reality of your business right now. Let's talk about photos and visuals. Yes. Ask yourself. Is the main photo on my homepage from this decade? Does it show products or services? I don't even offer anymore. Because that goes back to the credibility stat we started with. That 75% of users judge a business's credibility based on its design and photos. It's your digital storefront. So you want current, clear, authentic photos. Honestly, even a good photo taken on a new phone in natural light is better than a slick professional photo from five years ago. Authenticity over polish. Every single time. Show your current space, your current team, your current products, show what's real today. And the same goes for the text on the page, especially services and pricing. This is a huge one. Are your prices accurate? If you had to raise prices this year, the website has to reflect that. Otherwise, you're setting up a really awkward conversation within your customers. You create a bad experience right out of the gate. And what about the service list? Same thing. Have you added something new? Have you stopped offering something? The website has to be the single source of truth for what your business actually does. And this quiet time is a perfect opportunity to actually clarify those service descriptions. Absolutely. Think about the questions you get asked over and over again by customers. Answer those questions directly on your service pages.
[8:08]
It saves everyone time and qualifies your leads before they even call. So to recap, we've got a great little checklist here. Check your hours in contact form, update the copy right year, hunt for broken links, test your speed, and make sure your photos and pricing are current. It's a solid tune up. But sometimes as you go through that list, you realize that the small fixes aren't quite enough. You realize the foundation itself might be a little shaky. Right. And that's OK. The reality is the average website needs a pretty significant refresh every two to three years just to keep up with everything. Technology, design trends, security. So if you're looking at your site, and it's from 2020 or earlier, this quiet season is really your prep time for a bigger project. Exactly. And the key is not to get overwhelmed. The next step isn't higher a developer tomorrow. The next step is to make a simple list. What goes on that list? Three simple things. One, what's broken that I can't fix myself? Two, what do I wish my site could do? Maybe that I see my competitors doing. And the third one. What questions do customers ask me all the time that my website completely fails to answer? That's the most important one. And having that list just makes the conversation with a web designer so much easier. It takes the project from this big scary idea into an actionable plan. It's the most valuable thing you can do. It prevents overwhelm and sets you up for success in the new year. That's the quick tip for today. If you want a professional website without the agency price tag or the DIY headache, here is the better way. At UGRO.Pro, we build it, we manage it, and we handle every update forever, all for just $79 a month. There is zero setup fee, no contract lock-in, and it is strictly month to month. So there's zero risk. We're local here in AG, and we can have you live in days not months. Want to see what your site could look like? Go to UGRO.Pro right now. And we'll design three custom mock-ups for your business completely free, no strings attached. Thanks for listening, and keep growing.