Improving Website Value: How to Provide Value to Your Website Absolutely Free

You’ve picked an awesome niche. You’ve purchased an exact match domain. If there was any justice in the world, your site would be a goldmine in the making.

But despite the odds, you keep running into the same problem:

Every time you look at your ad revenue, you can’t help but feel like your site should be making more. And even though you want to scale and increase your website value, you don’t exactly have an endless pool of money to draw from.

The good news is that it only takes a few changes to sell a website for a significant sum of money. And the better news is that many of these value-boosting adjustments can be done for free.

Are you ready to turn your website into a first-class marketing asset? Read on to see how you can start making your site more valuable.

Run an Audit

If you want to turn your website into the best version of itself, it’s important to make sure that you understand what you’re up against. By our count, there are at least three things you’ll want to assess as you look for ways to increase your site value.

1. Your Website Traffic

Quick history lesson.

Back in the early 2000s, SEO was the marketing version of shooting fish in a barrel. You could write an article about fried chicken, and as long as your keywords were in the right place, you could get your post to show up for the words “buying new sneakers”. 

When Google decided to roll out its 2012 algorithm update, a lot of website owners saw their rankings and their traffic tank overnight.

In the present, your situation might not be that dramatic, but it does speak to the importance of revisiting your traffic stats. Are you seeing a consistent downturn? What keywords are people searching for when they find you?

If you can get a sense of what people are looking for, it becomes a lot easier to make sure that your website is meeting, and exceeding, expectations.

2. Formalize Your Website Metrics

In marketing, it’s easy for people to start speaking in buzzwords. But when you get into the habit of using generalities and fuzzy language, it becomes a lot harder to answer questions like, “Have we succeeded in making our site more valuable?”. 

The metrics you need will largely depend on your website’s business model.

If you’ve got a content-driven site, some statistics to keep track of would include your bounce rate and the time people are spending on your site. However, if you’re more of an ecommerce site, conversion rates may be your primary concern.

Regardless of the exact metrics you settle on, however, here’s the bottom line:

When you’re taking on a website improvement project, it’s important to have an objective standard that you can point to. The more specific you can get with your standards of success, the more accurate your assessments will be.

3. Evaluate Your Fundamentals

Buying a website is like buying a house. Almost nobody is going to pay full market price for a fixer-upper that needs a new kitchen and new plumbing. 

Why? Because the cost of repairs has to be factored into the final purchase price. 

Website buyers will more than likely use a similar logic when they evaluate your site. Modern users have certain expectations around the way they want their sites to look and feel. 

Is your site intuitive? Are people clicking way too many links to find what they’re looking for? Is your site offline more often than it’s online?

In the same way that tightened doorknobs and a new coat of paint can bump up your home’s resale value, a design makeover can make your website more valuable overnight.

Refine Your Monetization Strategy

Although the exact details may vary, website values are often calculated by multiplying several months’ worth of revenue. As such, you can often command a higher asking price simply by making more money through your site. If you’re wondering what that might look like, we’ve got your two main options covered here:

1. Increase Your Average Order Value

The Corporate Finance Institute defines average order value, or AOV, as the average amount of money that customers spend on your site. If you’ve only got one flagship product or if your offer is otherwise quite narrow, you might be reading this suggestion and wondering if this is even possible. But believe it or not, you have more control over this than you think.

For instance, you can try: