How has COVID changed your website?

Website design and content exists for the sole purpose of educating potential clients about the goods or services offered. During the pandemic, the needs of clients changed dramatically, pushing businesses to modify their websites and place COVID-friendly content front and center to stay afloat during difficult times. Do their struggles sound familiar?

Covid has Changed my Website in 3 Ways

As the nature of how people can marry [is fluctuating], I’ve had to ensure I have offerings for couples wanting tiny, fast weddings, as well as creating content around how to have small weddings, and what options are available to couples.

To that end, Covid has changed my website in the following ways:

1. During Covid, I’ve had to change the large-wedding images on my website to images that invite couples planning a small wedding or elopement. Couples, and indeed any consumer, only buy into what relates to them and their specific needs. It’s effectively meant switching around what is instantly visible on my website so that couples feel I have a relevant offering during Covid. Those that move the fastest are rewarded. It was incredibly important that my shopfront catered to a changed and emerging market in order to stay sustainable, rather than hanging onto what was.

2. During Covid, I’ve also had to ensure that I can be visible in Google for new search terms around Covid weddings, small weddings, and queries in and around that sphere. This has meant creating content and instructional blog posts that highlight and feature wedding planners and wedding venues that specifically cater to small weddings or elopements during Covid, so that not only can I position myself in Google with ownership over those search terms, but I can also latch onto the audience of those venues and planners with my own relevant offering.

3. As well as catering to the current climate as dictated by Covid, I’ve used the 4-5 months to also build up an enormous backlog of articles for SEO purposes to get a head-start in Google when the climate does indeed return, be that in 1-2 years time or beyond. Making a quick pivot to cater to things now while filling out the back of my site with articles and ideas to be indexed into Google for my domestic market as larger gatherings become an option in the mid-term, has been an important use of time.

My Website is a Robust Source of Resources About our Services – All as a Result Of COVID

Before COVID, my business website advertised our services in academic and test prep tutoring and also served as a hub of resources for students to access. It was a basic, no-frills website that spoke right to parents’ and students’ immediate desires for high grades and high scores. However, I founded my company on the idea that learning is so much more than just achieving high marks. My team of tutors and I utilize the tutoring sessions as opportunities to teach essential “soft skills” such as metacognition, executive functions, and interpersonal skills. Still, I did not advertise this beyond stating phrases like “we teach the underlying learning and life skills” because I found that many parents and students were mostly focused on grades and scores, and I did not want to come off too “foo-foo” and potentially deter clients.

Now, because of COVID, parents who have their children at home are realizing just how vital those skills truly are to areas such as task initiation, self-advocacy, and creative problem-solving. So, I re-vamped my website to reveal that we do assist with these needs. I also listened to my client’s pain points and added other services to my website, including a free blog geared towards helping parents and educators navigate schooling at home, daily Standby Tutoring “Office Hours” for last-minute help, live online Enrichment Courses for students ages 4-19 to get them excited about learning again, and more.

With this new content came many new viewers. The website began to experience hiccups. So, I hired a part-time website manager to help with upkeep and SEO. Now my website is a robust source of resources, guidance, and details about our services – all as a result of COVID.

How COVID has Changed Our Website.

1. More real estate is dedicated to COVID-specific information and offers. The pandemic has completely changed how people are getting married in 2020. Potential clients want more information about what weddings are looking like now and what steps we as vendors are taking to keep them and ourselves safe. Because weddings themselves are different (smaller and shorter), we have had to change the packages that we are offering. Potential clients also want to see information about that. So, we have had to devote more space to pages dedicated to COVID-related things. We have also had to display those pages and the links more prominently so that people can find them quickly.

2. Our SEO is much more COVID-focused. Potential clients are quite understandably changing what they are looking for with Google. They are searching for terms specifically relating to COVID and weddings, and COVID and wedding photography. With that in mind, we have created a lot more copy intended to get us found in those searches.

Added The “Pandemic” Tab On My Website

In the past fifteen to twenty years, I had a website under my name that was static and descriptive of my therapeutic philosophy and offerings as a therapist. When COVID-19 started, I did not change my overall website but opened a new “Pandemic” tab where I started writing about the pandemic. I also recorded a few meditations, which I connected to the “Pandemic” tab on my website.

My website still remains quite basic and homemade. What is different in the Pandemic tab is a change of tone which reflects an openness to share and be less of a blank screen therapist. I did not devise this change as a marketing strategy. If anything this tab is the scrappiest of the whole site, but it reflects the way I feel: deeply affected, coping, helping others, and also quite raw.