Is Your Website Better Than The Average Site?
Aim to be smarter than the average site.
When creating or refreshing a website it’s important to consider its purpose and potential objectives. The vast majority of websites are created with the intention of either selling something or providing information. They need to justify their development and hosting costs, and establishing whether this is in fact happening requires dipping a toe into the complex world of metrics. This is the modern-day science of website performance evaluation, from loading times and engagement levels to transaction completion ratios.
These are some of the key factors that determine whether a website is overachieving or underperforming, along with practical solutions if the results aren’t flattering:
- Search engine rankings. Search for the name of your company or service in Google, and see which page it appears on. Then search for the key products or services you offer, and again see which pages they come up on. These are your search engine rankings, which will fluctuate over time as search engines revise their ranking formulae.
Solution: Bolster rankings by incorporating commonly searched-for terms into web text, and summarising the key products/services you offer in the HTML title tags that describe each web page. Use popular search terms as photo captions, too. Persuading third-party websites to link to yours also has a positive impact on ranking results.
2. Loading speeds. Every additional second a website takes to load will cause a percentage of visitors to give up and go elsewhere – known as page abandonment. A quarter of people will leave if a website hasn’t loaded within four seconds, and slow response times adversely affect search engine rankings as well.
Solution: Ensure that the website has been programmed efficiently with no unnecessary lines of code. If you’re using WordPress, minimise the use of plugins. Reduce image sizes as much as possible without making them look pixellated, and ensure that your chosen web hosting provider offers rapid access at any time of day.
3. Mobile compatibility. A decade ago, internet access involved a computer only; today, most web traffic comes via mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Search engines mark sites down if they’re not mobile friendly, so websites need to cater for iPhone and Kindle users just as much as desktop PCs and laptops.
Solution: Choose a website template that either resizes according to the resolution of each device’s screen, or use a one-size-fits-all design that displays identically on any platform. Before the site goes live, test it on as many different devices and web browsers as possible, checking for variations and reprogramming to eliminate them.
4. Bounce rates. A proportion of web traffic leaves after viewing a single page – this is known as the bounce rate. Generally speaking, the homepage will receive most incoming traffic, though it’s worth investigating which subpages people arrive at. A degree of attrition is natural, but if most visitors are bouncing, there may be an issue.
Solution: Create a free account with one of the big analytics companies like Google Analytics, enabling you to track which page people leave your site from. Look for patterns in behaviour, and consider what could be causing them to depart. Analytics can also tell you where traffic is coming from, which is always valuable knowledge.
5. Conversion rate. Extending the principles of bounce rate analysis, a conversion rate is the percentage of people arriving on a website who complete a purchase. The average conversion rate is just 2.35 per cent, and even the most successful websites struggle to get more than one in ten consumers to make a purchase.
Solution: Use time-limited offers to create a sense of urgency, and tempt people in with introductory offers or bespoke reports/feedback. Minimise the amount of user data required to complete a transaction, ensure ecommerce functionality is reliable, and feature testimonials or case studies to reassure new customers that they’re in safe hands.