Dress up your website with these 3 fun tips

Creating new content and keeping your website fresh does not have to be difficult or break the bank; like a classic little black dress, all a nice website needs to make it new again is some updated pieces.

3 ideas for keeping your website fresh

Change those slides

Slideshows are a hot website design feature and many businesses utilize them on their homepages. However, you can usually tell when the website was first created by looking at when the slides were last updated. Stop neglecting the slides.

Events and timely content always should be featured on your slideshow. It shows that your brand is working hard and up-to-date and involved. Just make sure to take those slides down soon after the event, because old slides have the opposite effect; it looks like your brand has stopped being active.

If you don’t have any time sensitive content, just change the slides to highlight various blog posts, services you offer, hidden gems on your website or whatever you want—just keep them fresh.

Add a video

People love videos—even when they are not about cats. Experts are predicting that video is going to be the future of content marketing, so it is time to start integrating video into your strategy and website.

It’s important to note that consumers don’t always expect big budget videos; they just want videos that provide them with information, inspiration or the feeling that they are part of your brand. For quick, easy videos turn some of your blog posts into videos, have some of your employees speak on their topic of expertise or share some testimonials.

Ready to take video to the next level? Try creating a user-generated video. Ask your audience to share videos of themselves using your product or supporting your campaign and create a montage video with all the submissions. A great example of this is Target’s acceptance letter video. (Warning: This video will pull on your heartstrings.)

Take advantage of what’s trending

Creating timely content will keep your website up-to-date and fresh, but it will also help you showcase your brand’s personality. One of the easiest ways to stay relevant is by crafting some of your blog posts, headlines or images around trending topics in pop culture, news or your industry.

One of the most famous examples of brands referencing pop culture is Oreo’s blackout tweet. But we don’t all have ridiculously speedy design teams, so a more practical example would be “the dress.” Marketing teams big and small made references to the dress for days. One of my favorite examples was from National Camera Exchange.

Once you have dressed up your website, don’t forget to market the new content on social media and in your e-newsletter. Integration of all your content channels will boost your engagement numbers and ROI.