Your website should feel alive — active, engaging, helpful to the reader, and productive for your reader and you. This includes showcasing your expertise, goods and services, competence, team, projects, and client deliverables.
It should also position you firmly among your competition AND make the visitors to your site happy they visited. They will be satisfied, at a minimum, when they easily find what they need.
You may not want to refresh your website significantly. It takes time, effort, and money, but you can still make quick and helpful changes.
With a little effort, you can show that your website is not neglected and that you want visitors to have a valuable, impressive, and productive experience.
Here are three easy and inexpensive ways to rock your website into 2025 in style.
Are your images memorable and engaging?
Mix up your images, being sure to include the latest trendsetters.
For cutting-edge suggestions, see DepositPhotos’s recent publication, Creative Trends 2025 Elevated Perspectives.
Creative Trends has too many great suggestions to list them all here. Still, I have a sampling for you: mixed media collages, surrealism, blue gradient, ultra-contemporary, hyper-sentimentalism, fantasy, clutter, and dark noir (as in the AI-generated photo above).
Do you know any business website that doesn’t have an image of hands on a keyboard somewhere on their site? Nearly everybody has one! Mine is prominently placed, but its time has come and gone. In other words, it is time to ditch at least some of the stock photos.
AI can generate super photos quickly, even if you have a minimal budget. Although AI may have trouble generating hyper-sentimentalism images, with a talented prompt, my money is on AI doing a great job.
Are you providing a high-quality user experience (UX)?
Improve your site’s emotional intelligence with a handful of narrative changes.
Here are five essential ingredients for a successful user experience. If any of these five are missing, now is the best time to add them. Do you use them all?
- Use the word “you.” This will let your visitors know you are talking directly to them and are interested in resolving their problems.
- The use of emotional or action words such as discover, believe, disappointed, rehearse, pursue, solve, assess, question, admire, grateful, affectionate, read, smile, cry, laugh, amuse, invest, and monitor. Along with the “you” word, these engage the reader even further.
- Space it.
- Do not use long sentences or paragraphs. You can even use one-sentence paragraphs. Visitors are reading quickly and appreciate when they are not being slowed down.
- This means you need to have lots of empty spaces.
- When in doubt, place a spout! I mean a space! (That silly little word mistake will help you remember #3 in this list.)
- Use great visuals, including graphics, charts, infographics, and trendsetter images.
- Be sure to add in questions, statistics, and testimonials.
Are your testimonials in the right places?
Reposition testimonials into a location proven to increase conversion to new business.
HubSpot tested this recently and concluded that you should avoid placing testimonials at the bottom of a page. Your reader may not read to the bottom of the page.
Placing your most powerful testimonials closer to the top may keep your visitors on your page longer. The longer a visitor visits, the higher the likelihood of conversion.
It would be best to work with your designer to make the testimonials accessible but not overbearing in their new location. You might consider a short carousel that pairs testimonials with fun, original, and trendy images.
Which suggestion above do you think would most impact the success of your website? What would you add to our basic list? One essential is missing. Do you know which one?
For a complimentary website audit or help with your content, call (610-304-7472) or email me (Terri@TerriSmithCopywriter.com).
P.S. I love researching and writing blogs.
