Essential Tips to Optimize Your Website

We caught up with FPW Media‘s founder, Owen Garitty, to learn how small businesses can improve their online presence, an asset in the midst of a digital age. Here are a few tricks of the trade!

What are 3 things a business can do to create a strong online presence?
In order to establish and maintain a strong online presence, it’s vital that content is posted regularly, is high quality, and is in some way useful to your audience. Business owners should work to establish themselves as the experts in their industry, or as the authority in their space or field. Regular, quality, useful content is the best way to do so.

What is one pitfall businesses fall into when creating/maintaining a website, and how can they avoid it?

The worst thing you can do for your business’s website is to build it and forget about it. Just like a building, storefront, or office space, websites require ongoing maintenance, cleaning, and investment of time, money, and intention. Your website is online real estate, and it requires as much energy as a physical asset. If your time is limited, the best thing you can do is engage a marketing partner to maintain your online presence while you continue to focus on your core business.

Should a business consider investing in high-quality photos as opposed to stock photos? What would be the benefits of doing so?
The power of a good, relevant photograph has not diminished in the digital age. If anything, increased content circulation has made it more important to communicate through imagery on your website. Stock photography can feel disingenuous, which can decrease customer trust and potentially harm your brand. Ideally, businesses are using a mix of high quality photo and video content that really represents their product, service, and team. Consider partnering with a fully integrated branding agency that can help establish your online presence through imagery.

Owen Garitty, Founder of FPW Media

What’s a simple step a business can take to make their website more mobile device-friendly?
These days, most business’s MO should be “mobile first,” not “mobile friendly.” That’s because, barring a few industries, the majority of website traffic–more than 50% as of 2021– is using a mobile device to access the web. Tools like Google Insights and Pingdom can help score your website load speed and uptime, providing a good starting point to assess how much work needs to be done for mobile optimization.

What are the core business values of FPW?
Our founding values are the same ones we live and work by today–to make the impossible possible on a daily basis for our incredible clients. Our three connected divisions work together to create an innovative branding experience that evokes a response from clients’ ideal demographic.