The time when we could be content with our website functioning as a digital business card is over. The number of websites in the world is increasing by huge numbers with each passing day. If you want to avoid your website ending up in a small dusty corner of the Internet, there are some clear steps that need to be taken in 2023 to keep your website relevant. There is a focus on leads, conversion, organic traffic and dynamic text.

#1 Increased organic traffic

We are a lot of small business owners who are tired of paying exorbitant amounts of money for advertising, that’s one thing for sure. Because even if you pay for advertising, it is not certain that you will get the exposure you desire. Or even that it leads to more purchases. Also, many people are tired of ads in their social feeds. It takes quite a lot to voluntarily click on an advertisement or sponsored post, and unfortunately many of the clicks happen by mistake. Thus, the money spent on this type of marketing does not always generate the desired profit.

Therefore, 2023 will be the year when knowledge of how to drive traffic organically will be hotter than ever. Whoever can get people to their website via search results, image search and natural exposure in social channels will be the big winner. The visitors are then genuinely interested in the page they visit and there you have your chance – to capture the need and convert the visitor into a paying, returning customer. So learn about organic traffic faster than the fastest, and start working actively to work up your channels. Some well-proven methods that work are:

• optimize texts, search results and images
• drive traffic to your website via social channels and mailing list
• always include a CTA, call to action, in your content
• publish subject-specific texts on your website (see #2)

#2 More subject-specific texts

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of mundane, consumerist and pointless information online. I get the same feeling when I read certain types of blogs or follow certain types of social media accounts that I get when I’m in front of the TV and a really typical reality show – that I’m wasting my time.

2023 will be the year when we value the genuine and genuine – knowledge, craftsmanship, time-consuming processes and high quality. For website owners, this means you have to show what you can do before you get customers. The competition online is great and in order to stand out, you have to show that you have the skills that your visitors are asking for. On a website, subject-specific texts are the very best way to do it. In addition, it is the very best way to tell Google that you have a website that delivers what visitors are looking for. And for the visitors themselves, reading this type of text is the best way to determine whether they have landed correctly on your website or not.

In the form of articles, tips & tricks or a knowledge bank, you can share your expertise and show that you are the right supplier for the visitor, without having to reveal all your secrets or approaches. Perfect topics to write about are things that you want your customers to know in order to make the most of your collaboration. Teach basic knowledge, establish industry terms and demonstrate your expertise in the subject area and you will build both trust and a relationship with potential customers.

#3 In-depth relationship with potential customers

Anyone who has lost access to an established social media account will never make the mistake of relying on companies like Meta or Twitter to build a customer database. Simply put, you do not own contact rights to your social media followers. You need to make sure to build other communication channels to the followers who are actually interested in the services and products you offer. The best way to do this is to collect email addresses, so-called leads, to a mailing list. No one can take a mailing list away from you, and you thereby have direct access to the inbox of the most interested customers.

A common way to collect leads is to have customers click a box when checking out a purchase or to offer some kind of free material in exchange for the address, as according to the GDPR collection must always take place with active consent. Suggestions for popular such material can be a guide, a checklist or some other form of quick win for the visitor for automatic download on the website.

So 2023 will be the year when you need to figure out how to get visitors and followers to sign up for your mailing list and then work it up as a hot communication channel. In this article, you can read more about why you need a mailing list and get tips on how to get started.

#4 Possibilities for direct conversion

We are used to everything online going faster and faster and becoming more and more. As travelers online and in social media, we keep a breakneck pace and make quick decisions, we get easily distracted and we wander from place to place, seemingly unplanned most of the time. For a website owner, this means that the time span when we have our visitors’ interest is short. We need to do something about the interest shown in the moment it exists to capture potential customers and create conversion. When you get a visitor to interact with you or buy from you, the likelihood of them coming back is greater, provided you deliver with quality, that is.

To take advantage of this fleeting interest, it can be valuable to have some opportunities for direct conversion on your site, i.e. smaller products or services in the lower price range, < SEK 500, which do not require such big decisions to make. It could be a digital product such as a template, a guide or a shorter e-book, or it could be a start-up call at a discounted price with automatic booking via the website.

Here you will find suggestions for digital products you can get started and sell immediately. And here you will find a checklist to help you get started with creating and selling your first digital product.

#5 Increased profitability with paid access

If the readers are tired of the blogs, then those who blog in turn are tired of their readers. Or maybe not the readers themselves, but many bloggers, writers and podcasters are rightfully tired of spending huge amounts of time sharing free material. Therefore, you are now seeing an increase in, for example, writers who are starting to charge for parts of their articles and knowledge banks. This applies especially to those writers who have a lot of traffic and have clear subject-specific themes on their sites. You can see that the trend also goes in this direction on social media, where it is their functionality to charge for followers to be able to access certain parts of the material.

This type of arrangement can be created on a website with the help of subscription services or with the help of locked pages and logins. I personally think that it can be a good way to get away from many of the problems you as a writer encounter in everyday life such as boring or threatening atmosphere in the comment fields or readers who are not there for the right reason. But above all, it is a way for serious actors with a large audience to finally get paid for their work.

Summary – trends for websites 2023

Do you need to level up your website?

If you want help along the way with raising the level of your website a notch, registration of interest for the Site Boost Academy course is now open. The course starts at the beginning of 2023, but if you are on the list, you get a really good offer and can take part in parts of the course even before the course starts. You can find the expression of interest here.

Did you like this trend scout? If so, please comment and share the article further.