One of the challenges we face with landscape design clients who have been with us for years is their boredom. If a business owner gets restless about their marketing, they may end up making big mistakes for no reason.
That’s why we tell clients, “You should be bored
But there’s one big part of your digital marketing that landscape designers SHOULD keep from getting stale: their websites. How do you know if you’re legitimately in need of a new site?
Site Errors
The No. 1 indicator of an aging site is errors. These can come in a lot of forms that don’t greatly impact the functionality of the site but do make you look unprofessional and sloppy.
The most common error is broken images, which can indicate problems with the server, a poorly coded website or the image has been damaged. The first and last happen more frequently as the site ages.
The next error messages you’ll see a lot are 404 errors. These occur when you point a link at a part of your website that no longer exists. They’re another sign of an aging website.
You may also begin to see “insecure website” errors. Google Chrome is clamping down on sites that aren’t secure. To check if you have a secure site, look at the URL. Does it start with
How can you tell if you’ve got these errors? Give us a call, and we’ll walk through a free site audit with you.
Dated Design
Nothing lasts forever. As tastes and technology change, so should your website.
If you’re a landscape designer, you want your prospects to see you as being on the cutting edge of design ideas. A website that looks like it was built 5 years ago doesn’t do that.
We recommend our clients budget for a new site every 3 years. If you amortize the cost on that time frame, it only comes out to about $140 a month, depending on the complexity of the site.
It Doesn’t Rank
There are a few reasons your site might not be ranking for the crucial searches you need.
The first is technical. Some website platforms just don’t have the technical side of things polished the way they should. The platform you choose can make a big difference
We recommend you build your site on the WordPress platform, the best platform for SEO at the moment.
You may also not have the right content structure. Google prefers long content. Very long. Since you’re aiming to rank for several keywords based on your suite of services, you want to have several long service pages. These should be SEO-optimized researched, so you know you’re hitting the best keywords.
You’ll also need a place on your website to blog. The blog gives you a place outside of your service pages to produce content. Google wants to see a consistent stream of content, and you’ll need to target “long-tail keywords.”
It Doesn’t Sell
If your site is seeing plenty of impressions or traffic, but not getting a lot of conversions, you probably don’t have a site that’s built to sell.
You need a site with the right calls to action peppered in throughout the site. These are direct asks for your visitors to convert, such as “call us” or “schedule an appointment”.
You also need to build indirect asks, which capture visitors further up the sales funnel. Here, you ask them to stay connected with you in exchange for something of value. Maybe you give them a free e-book or a newsletter subscription. Once you have them in your sales process, you can continue to deliver value and ask them to convert.
If your website has any of these problems, contact us today! We can give your site a quick look and talk over your options.