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Is your website giving back what you put in? Is it generating new business and attracting new customers? Website performance is key to ensuring customers find your business and are able to engage with the products or services you offer. If not, you may need to look deeper into why it isn’t working the way you need it to.
Website Performance Checklist
In order to get your website performance working for you, begin by asking yourself these questions.
- Is your site up to date?
- Do search engines find your site easily?
- Can users navigate your site easily?
Each of these questions must be answered in the affirmative in order for your website to truly work for your business. Once you have these items sorted, you can move on to other areas of optimizing your online presence, such as marketing.
An Updated Website
First, you must consider the technical aspect of your website performance. Are all of your themes and plugins up to date? If not, your site may be open to unwanted traffic and hackers. Whether you can think of a reason for someone to illegally access your site or not, hackers sometimes just like to access for the fun of it. Having everything up to date in the back end offers you some level of security. Check your plugins and themes regularly to minimize this risk.
Second, are the details shared on the front end of your website up to date? You must ensure that your contact details and forms, your “about us” information, products and prices, and news items are updated and relevant. The older your content is, the less potential customers and clients will engage. Think of this as your first impression. Make the front end of your website as interesting and engaging as possible.
Website Performance Optimization
One of the main ways new customers will find your website is through searching on the internet. Search engine optimization may sound like a strange language to you. However, if your site isn’t optimized, it won’t perform well in search engine results such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
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Therefore, having an optimized site is important to your website performance. Optimization is possible without having to understand the details of search algorithms. You may add a plugin to your back end that can help to optimize your site. Alternatively, you can employ a search engine optimization company like Searchbloom SEO. Such companies optimize your site for you.
Getting Around Your Site
Once your customers are on your site, can they find what they are looking for easily? Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to have much information and too many options for them to select in order to get around your website. Your website performance is directly impacted by the content you place online. Potential customers might get confused and simply find someone else whose website is easier to use.
Have one navigational menu at the top of the website with only your main areas listed. Then have an easily accessible search box so they can simply type in what they are looking for and find it straight away. Highlight interesting articles or FAQs in the sidebar so they can see these easily. Another great page to add to your site is a Start Here page, listing all the most relevant pages your customers need to see as soon as they arrive on your site.
While there are many excellent websites on the internet, only the sites that ensure these areas are well-tended truly work for their business owners. As the front face of your online presence, you must invest the time and effort into the details of your website performance in order to make it successful. Now you know where to start!
