5 Ways to Optimize your Website Performance
Sponsored article
This article is sponsored by SatelliteWP : www.satellitewp.com.
Your website is an important business asset. You have invested dozens of hours and thousands of dollars in its creation. Is your investment paying off as well as you would like?
Your website is a colleague who represents your company and can work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, without rest, providing information faster and more efficiently than the humans who manage it.
When optimized, your website becomes an “exemplary colleague” and will undoubtedly be your most profitable asset! Optimization involves both technical and marketing aspects.
By following the recommendations in this article, you will be able to:
- increase the credibility and image of your company;
- improve search engine visibility;
- improve your visitors’ user experience;
- accentuate the performance of marketing campaigns;
- increase conversions and sales;
- take advantage of the latest web technologies;
- amortize website costs over a longer period.
Without further ado, here is how to get there! A bonus awaits you at the end!
1. Clear Calls to Action
The first step can be summed up in one word: clarity!
Is your offer quick and easy to understand? Are the advantages and benefits clearly displayed? An easy way to check? Ask someone you know to perform a specific action on your site, or to describe your offer to you, without giving any instructions. If they can do it, you are on the right track! Otherwise, there is work to be done in terms of user experience and the marketing values to be inserted into your content.
Finally, does every page (and sometimes every section of a page) on your website have a clear objective to achieve and clearly explain why doing business with you is better than doing business with a competitor?
The image below is an example where the site tells the visitor to order a check-up now. This is combined with an eye-catching button whose color and text clearly indicate what will happen if the visitor clicks on the button.
If you do not explicitly ask your visitors to buy now or register their email address, how can you expect them to take action?
2. Website Speed
Nobody likes to wait! If your website is slow, it will be frustrating for your visitors. It is also frustrating for you, because search engines use speed to determine your page rank. The slower it is, the slimmer your chances of being in first position for your natural referencing.
Based on several studies that have been carried out on the subject, a one-second slowdown can lead to a considerable drop in your conversions. In other words, if you make your visitors wait, your sales will suffer.
In theory, you should aim for a page load time of 1 second or less. In practice, you need to consider the context and the investment involved in order to achieve attainable performance.
The first step is to check the speed of your site on the computer and on mobile devices. Fortunately, Google has created an easy-to-use tool that gives you a score out of 100 for both categories: Google PageSpeed Insights.
The analysis is theoretical, and you need to know how to interpret the nuances of the result. On the other hand, the score out of 100 is a very good indicator.
If you have 90 or more, it is perfect! There will not be many technical improvements to make!
If you score between 70 and 89, you have an opportunity to optimize speed and directly impact your results!
If you have a score below 70, you are definitely leaving money on the table.
Speed affects all web marketing activities, especially paid campaigns such as Google Ads and Facebook. The reason is simple: paid marketing tools take into consideration the quality and performance of your landing page. A slow page can have limited circulation despite a high investment budget.
3. Eliminate Technical Errors
Your site may contain high-quality visuals and clear, concise explanations. But if all this is combined with technical errors, your efforts may fall short.
Without wishing to be in bad faith, many companies focus solely on what can be seen on the screen. The use of the wrong HTML tags, broken links and non-clickable buttons are just a few examples of technical errors that are not easily seen and have a major impact.
Here is an example of a technical error that can be seen in the development console and that can impact your visitors, even if the visual appears intact:
Your site is most likely responsive and automatically adjusts to all screen sizes. Are you sure your site displays correctly on computer, tablet and mobile? A simple navigation of your website on these three devices will show you whether everything is working properly. If you encounter any problems, make a note of them!
A web agency or web marketing agency can help you identify and correct these problems, which can be difficult to spot for the uninitiated.
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is a set of marketing and programming techniques designed to help search engines better understand what a web page is about and for which searches (based on the keywords the user is looking for) it should be presented.
Despite the great technological advances in artificial intelligence, it is still necessary to carry out these optimizations manually, and to monitor them constantly in order to achieve the best possible results.
“The difference between a continuously optimized page and a non-optimized page will generate a drastically different number of visits. What’s more, the quality of visits will be much higher if the information is structured in a way that makes it easier for search engines to understand… and for humans too!” says Philippe Lalonde, digital strategist at Tonus Marketing.
Before you can optimize your SEO, it is important to have data to analyze so you can make recommendations. If your site is not connected to Google Analytics, Matomo Analytics or a similar service, you need to take these steps. The data collected will enable you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your website, and then optimize it.
In this way, your web marketing team can monitor the progress of your search engine optimization efforts.
5. Optimized Technological Environment
Imagine you are a pastry chef and you have made the best wedding cake ever for your client who is getting married next weekend. If the cake is delivered on the wrong date, what does it matter how good the cake tasted, how good the ingredients were, or even how “very competitive” the price was? None of that will matter to your customer!
The efforts made in the previous points will be worthless if your technological environment cannot deliver optimal results. This starts with a quality web host whose infrastructure is up to date.
First of all, your hosting provider has its share of responsibilities: the equipment must be state-of-the-art, the technical support must be fast and efficient, and the price must be competitive. PlanetHoster offers a range of services to meet your needs.
However, it is your responsibility to make the best possible use of the technologies at your disposal. What we have noticed at SatelliteWP is that most companies aren’t aware of all the possibilities. The Web has its share of subtleties, and it can quickly become complex.
Your web maintenance should include:
- daily backups;
- software updates;
- security scans;
- availability monitoring.
A company specializing in website maintenance can help you protect your assets, but also assist you in correcting problems and upgrading your website. The last thing you want is to have to pay for a hacked site disinfection.
Wondering whether your website is at risk? There are tools to answer that question!
So, if you click on the Get a free risk analysis link, a free analysis of your site will enable you to assess the level of risk associated with its management and the opportunities for improvement.
The stakes in cybersecurity are higher than ever, and it is important not only to protect your digital assets, but also to be prepared in the event of a successful attack: we call this cyber-resilience. The question is no longer “if” we will be successfully attacked, but rather “when” it will happen.
Bonus : Advertising Campaigns
Creating advertising campaigns is a way of complementing the efforts made on your website to turn a visitor into a customer. An advertising campaign can be created via online advertising on networks such as Google Ads or Meta (Facebook, Instagram) Ads. It is also possible to advertise via the newsletter of a partner, a podcast, a webinar or even an “offline” initiative where visitors are directed to your website.
If your budget is limited, you might even consider advertising on your own site. That is right! Here is an example of advertising integrated by SatelliteWP on its own blog:
For your campaign to be a success, make sure it is targeted at your ideal clientele to maximize results.
Conclusion
If you put your efforts in the right places, you will undoubtedly get the most out of your website. It can help you present your offer, sell your products and services, provide customer service, reduce technical support calls and much more!
Remember, your website is your best ally in business. Taking care of it is a must!
Learn more about SatelliteWP
SatelliteWP is made up of WordPress experts whose mission is to ensure the maintenance, cybersecurity and performance of websites using WordPress. Our day-to-day work involves the prevention, patching and evolution of WordPress sites for our customers.
Find out more about the founders and their motivation:
You can also listen to the podcast on Spotify: Interview with the founders of SatelliteWP.
Sponsored article
This article is sponsored by SatelliteWP : www.satellitewp.com.