Today we are sharing our advice for the top 5 things we believe every website needs to take into account.
1. UX (User Experience)
How do people feel when they click on your website? Is your website easy to navigate, does it tell people what your business is and what you provide, or does it have people confused? Our rule of thumb is that people should know within 30 seconds who you are and what you do. Furthermore, put yourself in the shoes of a consumer when visiting your site.
2. Load Time
Don’t underestimate the importance of load time. Today users have no patience for websites with a poor load speed and neither does Google.
Studies have shown that if a website hasn’t loaded within 3 seconds, it has a higher likelihood for users to abandon the site.
Ways we can try to remedy this is hosting your website in Australia (Google seems to put more value on people opening or searching for websites in their own country too), Another way is to ensure your image file sizes are kept low.
Websites with lots of sliders (the slide show of images and text at the top of your home page) need to pre load all of these before your website even opens so we keep these to a very maximum of three.
3. Analytics
Having a website without monitoring its statistics; is like having a business without monitoring your bank account.
Analytics is not just a way of measuring website traffic; it can be used as a tool for business and market research. This allows you to see what you’re doing right and how your SEO is working too. It can also show if you’re directing people to your website from Social Media and how effective it is.
4. Good Copy & Images
Quality and purposeful copy is what attracts search engines, in-turn directing people to your site. It is the vehicle that turns prospects into customers.
Finding and creating the right balance of headings, body text and images that helps your potential clients to be drawn to your site and to keep them engaged and clicking.
The headings, texts and images need to be relevant, engaging and purposeful. Don’t ramble and repeat yourself, the last thing you want is for customers to leave your site because its too wordy. Keep your body text to around 300 words seems to be what search engines are favouring currently.
5. Keep it Easy
People come to your website for different things; some people want to spend time browsing and really getting to know who you are and what you do, others are simply there because they would rather cut to the chase and call you.
So we need to be aware of this and ensure we cater to what a multitude of potential clients wants. This is why having visible and hyperlinked contact opportunities throughout your site, internal site linking (Google seems to also favour this) and a clearly labelled menu will help people find what they want and quick.
Our goal – minimise the amount of clicks it takes for someone to contact you and to see your services.
