Top 5 Ways To Improve Website Performance
August 8, 2017
Do you have a website that’s failing to generate new leads for your business? Is your website’s bounce rate significantly high? Whether you know it or not, your website might have several critical flaws that are preventing it from performing at its best. Here we’ve compiled the top ways you can improve website performance.
Design & User Experience
One of the most important aspects of your website is the overall feel and experience it provides users. To make users stay on your website and keep them coming back in the future, you need to carefully design the layout with your user’s specific tastes and needs in mind.
Balancing text with images, creating an easy to navigate layout, and complying with ADA regulations should be a top priority when designing your website. If you done correctly, your website will be both easy to use and attractive when users arrive from a search query or direct link.
Mobile Responsiveness
According to a 2016 study by StatCounter, over 51% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices. This means that more and more users are visiting your website on the go or away from the office. Now that it’s 2017, that number is steadily climbing and the need to improve website performance for mobile users is growing.
If users have to zoom in or out to view content on your website from their mobile devices, it’s a problem. If user’s have difficulty navigating through different pages or are faced with images that don’t fit their screen, it can easily deter them from visiting again.
From an SEO perspective. Google is crawling and indexing mobile versions of websites first to determine search rankings for websites. If your website isn’t mobile friendly, users searching for products or services related to your business may be directed to a competitor’s site. This may result in a significant loss in website traffic and potential customers.
SEO Best Practice
Having a beautifully polished website means nothing if users can’t find your website easily during a search. To ensure your website ranks highly for different keywords related to your industry, there are a few SEO best practices you should follow.
1. Relevant & New Content
You should try to post new and relevant content to your website on a regular basis. Blogs about industry topics and updates are a great way to start. If done well, search engines will continue to crawl and index your site periodically to update their search results. This will help your SEO ranking in the future.
2. Mobile Friendly
Search engines like Google and Yahoo are now penalizing websites that are not mobile friendly. To ensure strong SEO results, you need make sure your website is responsive to different screen sizes. If not, it can deter users and negatively affect search rankings.
3. Link Building
Link building is a popular way to drive traffic to your website. It can also help improve your websites SEO ranking. There are many free directories to help set you on the right path.
4. Functionality
Nobody likes visiting websites that take forever to load or have broken content. Search engines are programed to catch this and actually penalize sites that fall into this category. Making sure your website is running smoothly is an essential component to improve website performance.
Clear Goals & Content
Many websites today fail to accomplish the essential marketing goal of communicating and delivering value. To successfully draw internet users to your website and continue to capture their attention, you need to establish a clear message that you are delivering to your customers.
Are you an eCommerce site? Are you a source for industry updates & news? Why users are coming to your website and what specific needs they have? The first thing you should be doing with your website is discussing these questions with your management team and establishing a clear message with supporting content for your website.
Doing this will give you a better idea of what your target market is looking for and how you can tailor your website to meet their needs. If done well, your website can become the go-to place for loyal customers or novice users looking to gain insight into the industry.
Functionality
Bounce rates are a key indicator that you need to improve website performance website isn’t meeting the specific needs of your visitors. Whenever you analyze your website traffic through Google Analytics or another website tracking tool, you need to take into account the functionality of your website.
A leading contributor to bounce rates for websites is loading time for webpages. According to kissmetrics, if a page takes more than 4 seconds to load on your site, 25% of internet users will leave the site instead of waiting for the page to load. The longer the page takes to load, the higher the abandonment rate will be for your site.
In today’s online world, users expect quick results when searching for key information. If your site contains broken links, 404 errors, and slow load times, it may be time to do a complete overhaul.
Websites are at the forefront of your digital brand presence. In today’s online marketplace your website needs to be fast, filled with relevant content, and provide everything user’s need in an easy-to-use layout. The time to improve website performance is now!
Looking to give your website a fresh look and feel? Think it’s time for your website to work harder for you? Think VIG!