Most companies today rely heavily on their online presence to meet sales and profitability quotas each month. But today’s web-savvy shoppers expect a lot more out of the average website than many companies realize. Taking the time now to optimize your website tools will pay off in the new year with more inbound traffic, higher numbers of email list subscribers and more prospect conversions into customers.

In this post, learn about six New Year’s resolutions you should absolutely be making for your website, starting right now.

Resolution #1: Add or Improve Your E-Commerce Functionality.

Your customers look for four safety signs before they become willing to enter their credit card data on your website and complete their online checkout:

• Recognizable credit card logos and safety seal logos.
• Advanced steps for card authentication (like entering the 3-digit security code on the card back to authorize the card to be charged).
• Secure socket layer encryption (SSL) – including a padlock or “https” in front of your site URL to let customers know the site is secure.
• A “Contact Us” page that lists email, a phone number and a physical address.

Luckily, there are any number of companies that can help you incorporate all four of these features quickly. By taking the time to ensure your e-commerce page is able to reassure customer safety concerns, you maximize your ability to generate more sales from your website.

Resolution #2: Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly and Quick to Load.

Nearly half of all shopping decisions begin with an online search on a small smart device, which makes having a mobile-friendly website the second most important feature your website must deliver (the first being e-commerce security, of course).

Remember that today’s impatient and overstimulated online shopper has approximately one second’s worth of patience if your site doesn’t load immediately – miss that narrow window and they will be gone and not likely to return.

• You can check your site’s mobile-friendlines and/or average load times with free online tools. If you find your score isn’t what you expected or hoped for, you can then check page by page until you discover what is causing the delays.

Resolution #3: Read and Review Your Analytics and Reports.

It is pretty hard to improve your website if you are not sure what needs improving. Some platforms, such as WordPress, come with built-in statistics and analytics to tell you how your site is performing on a daily or even yearly basis. You can also use  tools like Google Analytics to get a big picture overview of how your marketing plan intersects with your website.

Analytics can tell you who comes to your site from where, how long they stay, where they go and what they interact with. You can learn which days and times your target market is most active on your site. Analytics will also tell you whether visitors become customers.

Resolution #4: Integrate Your Website with Your Other Marketing Tools.

Your website should be like the mother ship for all of your other marketing tools – your blog, your social media feeds, your email marketing newsletters, your online store – everything should ultimately come through and return to your website.

If you have not integrated your website with the other marketing and organization tools you use, you are missing out on the majority of the heavy lifting your website can do for you.

Adding social sharing buttons and feed links is a first step. Creating landing pages for your Google Adwords and other ad campaigns is a next step. Posting to your blog at least once per week is yet another forward step you can take. The more all roads lead to and from your website, the higher you will likely be ranked in search engine results and the more likely organic searches are to lead prospects back to you.

Resolution #5: Play up the Visuals on Your Website.

Photos, videos, infographics, graphics, memes – visual content is not only our brain’s favorite way to receive and process information, but it is also the type of content web visitors are most likely to gravitate to and interact with.

The visuals must be good – excellent – to stand out from the crowd, but even an average photo or graphic is more likely to grab a browsing visitor’s attention than a wall of text with a hyperlink added.

Don’t be afraid to be creative and create your own infographics, memes, or visual content. If you fear you are lacking in creative skill, there are multiple companies that can provide the talent for you.

Resolution #6: Generate Amazing Blog Content.

A blog is still one of the most reliable ways to generate traffic to your website. Blog posts are also great tools to create shareable social media content. Blog posts give you a great excuse to regularly send something to the folks who subscribe to your email list group. And blog posts thrive with the help of fabulous photos, graphics and visuals.

Creating a content calendar for your blog (and for your overall marketing campaign) can help you ensure your focus is in sync across your social platforms online. Be sure you commit to posting regularly – if you can manage once per week or more frequently, this is ideal. But try to post on the same day and time so your visitors and followers get used to hearing from you regularly!

These six New Year’s resolutions will help your website pull its weight in your overall marketing mix and will also improve your brand recognition and reputation online.