There are a thousand reasons why people have websites. Perhaps you have a small business, maybe you are a writer and want to publicize yourself and your work, perhaps you have some knowledge that you really want to impart onto the world, and this is the ideal format. Whatever your reasons, you will want to find ways to improve your website, make it more discoverable, and engaging to your audience. When someone clicks onto your website, you have got a hit. However, if the website does not look the way they expect, or is slow and does not do what they expected it to do, they will click off. You want to avoid this. That means you need to increase the user experience at every chance. You have to encourage your visitors to stay.
Plan Your Site
This may well mean that you have to go back to the very beginning and work out just what exactly you are trying to say. What will make someone who has clicked onto your website stay? Perhaps you need to think about branding, whether you are an individual or a business, it makes no difference. What are you? What do you stand for? What are your core values, ethics, motivations, etc? You need a philosophy behind why you are doing what you are doing, and this makes the whole concept stronger with a solid foundation. Once you have developed a brand, this will cover how the site should look and feel in terms of colors, language, and tone. Think about why someone would conduct a search and click onto your website. The answer to this question needs to be clearly visible upon arrival. You need to consider headers, pages, and internal links and make the site as simple to navigate as possible. Do not create overly convoluted pages with hundreds of headers, you are far better sticking to seven or fewer.
Make it Mobile-Friendly
Mose people use their smartphones when using the internet, and if your site is not mobile-friendly, you are not going to keep your visitors for any meaningful length of time. If you cannot get the site to look good on a mobile device, perhaps you need to consider using a platform such as WordPress or Wix. These tools are very easy to use and have mobile-friendly capabilities catered into the software. Alternatively, you could call in an I.T firm to help you make your site mobile-friendly.
Page Speed
Nothing turns people off a webpage more than slow page speed. Anything much slower than two seconds is enough to make people click off. Users also see lengthy opening times as a microcosm of the business or page itself, and that does not bode well. Indeed, you have lost a customer before they have even seen your page. That means you need to invest in speeding things up. Think about removing distractions like complicated gifs, which do nothing other than diverting attention away from the point of the page in the first place. Optimize your pages and images. Remove anything unnecessary, such as plugins, etc. Take a good look at your pages and work out just is needed and what is superfluous.
Is all the Content Relevant?
Your website may well be full of irrelevant or outdated content that really needs to be extracted. Do not be under the illusion that more content is preferable. Nothing could be further from the truth. None of your visitors want to wade through oceans of waffles to get the piece of information they were after. You need to be succinct, to the point, as simple as possible without being patronizing, and you need to do all this with a little personality too. It may be best if you do a complete content overhaul. Remove anything overly complicated or distracting from the point. Even if that only leaves you with a few lines. A few lines of gold are far better than an ocean of waste. Think about other forms of content, like images, videos, infographics, blogs, and video blogging. When you look to create new content, do so with the idea of being simple and relevant. Also, think about how all your new content ties into your brand. If you have a brand narrative, or an overarching concept or story, this will help. It will also help you create content for your other marketing channels too like social media. You need a vast mix of content, but it all needs to come together and serve the whole. Imagine someone only had one page of your site to determine what you care about. This concept will help you build website page cohesion too. Each page is a piece of the puzzle.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the method you use to ensure that the search engines will find you. It is how Google rates your site, and it helps you develop a website that is enhanced for the user experience. Think about the keywords a user will type into the search bar in order to discover your site. Imagine you were that customer. What are you about? What are you selling? Whatever you come up with,m these keywords need to be littered all over your website in order to make it more discoverable. Keywords lead traffic to your website. To keep your site relevant and at the top of the search engine results, you need regular content. The simplest and easiest way to do this is by creating a blog. A blog can be about anything you want it to be about, but it is best to have it related in some way to your overarching narrative. That way, each blog can be peppered with the relevant keywords to enable the right users to find your site.
Call to Action
If you want people to follow a particular route on your website, you need to make this clear from the off with a clear and obvious call to action. Perhaps it is a phone uber or a contact box or the link to the online shop. Whatever it is, it needs to be clear.
Mocha Girl Alysia
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