The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Better Website Performance

For businesses and organisations today, it’s all about digital, and that means your website needs to be performing at its best. From fast loading speed, accessibility, and visual and relevant content to mobile-first, SEO, CTAs and linking, it must feel like a never-ending list to keep up with. 

Our ultimate cheat sheet for better website performance is your handy go-to guide so that you can keep your website performing at its best. 

You might be thinking that your website is working just fine but we wouldn’t be surprised to find that, with a quick website audit, there would be areas where you could make improvements. 

 

The better your website is performing, the more likely you will see low bounce rates, better engagement from an improved user experience, a higher ranking in search engine results and return visits, increased traffic and conversions, and seriously boosted brand awareness and reputation and sales bottom line. So, let’s get on with our cheat sheet to get you the best website performance. 

This has to be top of the list. Recent research by Hubspot revealed that a one second delay in loading can result in a 7% reduction in website conversions. So, even if you don’t get the other areas spot on, you must get this right. It could also mean a drop in page views (11%) and in customer satisfaction (16%). But there’s another aspect that’s just as important – Google ranking. Fast loading speed is one of Google’s top criteria for ranking your website in internet searches. The aim is for your web pages to load within 3-4 seconds. Ways you can increase page loading speed include optimising image sizes without reducing quality, cutting down on the number of plugins you are using, using website caching, database optimisation, cutting down on web fonts, and making sure there are no 404-page errors. 

Closely linked with the page loading speed, and that’s because a page that takes more than 5 seconds to load will result in 40% of visitors abandoning your website and going elsewhere. That’s a massive drop in potential conversions, and having had a disappointing user experience, those visitors probably won’t return to your website. 

Globally 54.5% of website traffic is via mobile devices, and that’s not including tablets! You might be thinking that your website is not global; not true. If your website is live on the internet, it can be accessed by anyone, anywhere in the world. A quick look at your website metrics will tell you just how many people from outside the UK visit your website and the type of device most are using. Let’s give you another statistic – 61% of your visitors are unlikely to return to you if they had trouble viewing your website on a mobile device. So, pretend you are a user and see how your website performs on a mobile device. You’ll soon find out the areas that you need to focus on, such as fast loading of images and online content. 

Optimising your website content for search engines is paramount to website performance success. SEO, which stands for search engine optimisation, ensures that all your online content, from text and graphics to videos and images, must be optimised with the most relevant keywords and phrases that are being used as search terms by users. Local SEO is becoming a key factor in website performance. Common search terms include ‘near me’ or ‘in my area’, which is driving the increase in local SEO optimisation. The importance of maintaining consistent social media activity, ensuring your company has an online directory listing, and link building with authoritative websites in your industry improves your local search ranking. 

This is your call to action buttons that appear on your website to ‘lead’ a user to the right web page so they can make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter, download a white paper, take advantage of a discount or special offer or just to find out more information on their query. Make sure they are relevant, clear and sit in the best area to catch your visitor’s attention and generate an action. 

Your online content is a major part of your overall website performance. It’s important to remember that people react more positively to visual content than pages of text. Not only that, Google’s Image Search is more likely to rank your website higher in search engine queries if the content is more visual in nature. But that doesn’t mean your content should be all visual. In fact, blogs that are informative, engaging and interesting are likely to attract 55% more website traffic than websites that don’t feature any, or few, blogs. But it’s essential to keep your blog page regularly updated with new information, and cover a wide variety of industry topics, to keep customers coming back. 

Google’s algorithms are regularly reviewed and updated, and part of their search ranking criteria is website performance. The field of digital marketing may seem like it’s getting bigger and bigger; in reality, it isn’t. The basis for successful website performance is embedded in the above areas, but keeping a website performing at its best means that regular updates to images, videos, content, blogs, links, social media, directory listings, and SEO are needed to keep visitors coming back again and again. 

it’seeze Horsham creates high-quality websites combined with reliable, jargon-free, helpful local support that delivers results. We ensure the websites we build are easy to understand and edit, with an extremely easy to use website editor. The local support we provide is backed up by a national team of web designers, web developers and domain experts. With completely transparent pricing and website packages that are easy to afford, call us today to create the website of your dreams and turn your business into a success. Contact us for more details.