You’ve been contemplating the question for some time now: what are you going to do with that old website you used to use? Whether it was a raging success or an obsolete burden from inception, for whatever reason it’s out of commission now. Well if you’ve been wondering how to resurrect your website so that you can use it as a flagship for your business and associated endeavors, below are some points you should adhere to before resurrecting your website!
Website Speed
Content Delivery Network
If you want to increase site speed, there are a few things you can do. First, you may want to establish your own content delivery network (CDN). The closer a user is geographically to the CDN server, the faster they will have the content delivered to them. If you want to go global, implementing a CDN will ensure that you never have to worry about speed issues; all the large websites do it!
Make Sure Images Are Optimized
Tools like Picturefill or Adaptive Images are great for individuals trying to save bandwidth and hasten site speed. If you don’t want to use these programs, you could start using image formats like WebP and Jpeg XR to help you reduce the weight of the images you’re featuring on your site; you won’t sacrifice image quality either.
If you’re unsure what any of these are, you’re probably not selling any services related to images and your easiest course of action would be to simply save your images at the smaller size of 72dpi.
Check Your Plugins
Plugins are great for when you’re trying to add functionality and features to your site, though such plugins will, in most cases, cause things to take longer to load. In addition, poor or outdated plugins can really be a drag on website speed; therefore, removing these plugins and replacing them with optimized versions is a necessity.
Bounce Rate
When we talk about bounce rate, we’re referring to the percentage of visitors who visit a website only to leave right away without interacting or engaging in any way. Is your site delivering its most important messages in a clear and immediate way, or are visitors confused when they access it? Does your website make an impression and showcase your brand? Do you publish content that is rich and serves your audience well? Are there technical errors that cause an unfavorable experience?
Bouncing a ball is fun; bouncing from club to club is fun: when potential customers bounce off your page, it isn’t fun.
Broken Links & 404 Errors
Make sure all your pages are functional and be especially sure that you’re not linking to any dead or outdated links anywhere. If there’s one thing that shoots a website’s credibility in the foot, it’s dead or outdated links.
Redesigns can optimize previous SEO efforts. Make sure you are not reinventing the wheel or starting from scratch. Understand what keywords you are already ranking and getting traffic for first; do this before you start replacing a bunch of pages, key content, metadata, and well-optimized pages. Also, ask yourself if you have all the correct formatting and meta tags implemented.
Usability Issues
Does the new design work on multiple browser types, mobile, etc.? Now more than ever people surf the web on their phones more than they do on their computers so it is imperative to have a mobile-friendly design. If you will be rolling out your own app with it, you will also have to make the decision of whether you will be making it native (to the iOS and Android systems) or hybrid so you will only need one type of code.
Use Available Tools To Monitor Performance
Use Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Broken Link Checker, and Screaming Frog. There are other products or services you may wish to use; these are just popular ones!
In Conclusion
You have ONE chance to make a good first impression. You must have a good looking site – yes, but it must also be intuitively functional and fast or your potential customers are going to be noping out of there faster than you can say ‘No WiFi.’ You don’t have to understand the backend details, but you do have to hire a professional who does and who can take care of the dirty work. This professional will help you ensure that your updated online presence serves both your business and customers well so that your new website will be a success.
April Edwards loves working with small businesses that are looking to grow and reach new customers online. Contact her today if you need help getting your next project off the ground or just some consultation to help drive your efforts home.
