Your website is an essential tool for attracting and engaging with customers. Perhaps, THE essential tool! However, just like your physical space, it also requires regular attention to stay fresh and effective. Now that spring is officially in the air, we think it’s the perfect time to give your website a thorough review.
Here are ten tips we’ve put together to help ensure that your website is in top shape for the rest of the year!
1) Make Sure Your Website Has Proper Header Tags
To ensure proper formatting and organization of your website’s content, it’s important to use proper header tags such as h1, h2, and h3. These tags help to structure your content, make it easier to read, and improve your search engine optimization (SEO).
Here’s how:
Use an h1 tag for your main page or post title, then use h2 tags for subheadings and h3 tags for any additional subheadings. Remember to only use one h1 tag per page or post and to use header tags in order of importance. By using header tags correctly, you’ll improve the readability and usability of your website for your visitors, and also signal to search engines the importance of your content, which can help improve your search engine rankings.
2) Use Recent Projects as Case Studies to Showcase Your Credibility
Taking the time to stop and reflect on recent projects can be incredibly valuable for showcasing your credibility to potential customers. To get started, take some time to identify your most successful and impactful projects. Then, craft a compelling narrative that outlines the challenges you faced, the solutions you developed, and the results you achieved. Be sure to use real data, testimonials, and other evidence to support your claims and show the value you provided to your clients.
Here are some examples of businesses that do this well:
Cadence Charity Services: Cadence’s case studies are well-structured and presented in a clear and concise manner, with a focus on the key challenges, solutions, and results achieved for each client.
InVision: InVision’s case studies are comprehensive, engaging, and visually appealing. They include real data and metrics, client testimonials, and quotes from key stakeholders.
Trello: Trello’s case studies use a problem-solution format to showcase how Trello’s solutions helped their clients overcome specific challenges. The case studies are also visually appealing and easy to navigate.
3) Ensure Your Website Has Accurate Page Naming and Descriptions for Each Webpage
When it comes to website usability and search engine optimization (SEO), accurate page naming and descriptions are crucial. Each webpage on your website should have a unique and descriptive page name that accurately reflects its content. This not only helps users understand what they can expect to find on the page but also helps search engines understand what the page is about. Similarly, each webpage should have a clear and accurate description that provides a brief overview of the content on the page. This can help users decide whether to click on your page in search results and can improve your click-through rate. Plus, by ensuring that your website has accurate page naming and descriptions, you can make it more user-friendly and SEO-optimized, helping you attract and retain more visitors and achieve your business goals.
4) Double-Check That All Images Have Alt-Descriptions
Having appropriate descriptions in place not only increases accessibility for visitors who use assistive screen readers, but they also help search engines identify the content of a page.
Here’s how to add alt-descriptions to an image on a website:
- Select the image you want to add the alt description to and click on it.
- In the image settings or properties, look for the option to add alt text or alternative text. Depending on your website platform or CMS, this option may be labeled differently.
- Enter a brief and descriptive alt description that accurately reflects the content of the image. The alt description should be concise, but it should provide enough detail for visually impaired users to understand the image’s content.
- Save the changes and check that the alt description is visible when you hover over the image or when the image fails to load. This ensures that users with visual impairments or slow internet connections can still understand the content of the image.
By following these steps and adding alt descriptions to your website’s images, you can make your website more accessible and user-friendly, while also improving your SEO. Win-win.
5) Check Your Website’s Loading Speed
Website speed is crucial for user experience and search engine optimization. A slow-loading website can be frustrating for visitors and may affect your search engine rankings negatively. Use a tool like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check your site’s speed, and identify areas where you can make improvements. Compressing images, reducing the number of HTTP requests, and minimizing file sizes are some ways to speed up your site. We recommend installing an image compression plugin such as TinyJPG to make your website faster (increasing its pagespeed scoring) and save bandwidth.
6) Update Your Website’s Content
First up: ensure that your website has accurate and up-to-date information about your products, services, and other relevant information. This includes your business hours, contact information, pricing, and any promotions or special offers. Then move onto adding new content – such as blog posts, videos, or infographics – to keep your visitors engaged and informed. By providing valuable and informative content, you can establish your business as a thought leader in your industry and build trust with potential customers. Additionally, regularly updating your website’s content can help improve your search engine rankings, making it easier for potential customers to find you online.
7) Ensure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly
Studies show that mobile devices now account for over half of all internet traffic. According to a report by Statista, in 2021, 54.8% of all website traffic worldwide was generated through mobile phones.
Ensuring that your website is mobile-friendly can help you attract and retain visitors. A survey by Google found that 53% of mobile users will abandon a website that takes longer than three seconds to load. Additionally, a mobile-friendly website can improve your search engine rankings. Google now uses mobile-first indexing, which means that the mobile version of your website is used as the primary version for ranking purposes. This can have a significant impact on your search engine visibility.
8) Make Sure Your Website is Secure
One of the most important steps you can take to safeguard your website is to ensure that it is up-to-date with the latest security patches. This means regularly updating your website’s software and plugins to prevent vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers.
Using secure protocols such as HTTPS is also essential for website security. HTTPS encrypts the communication between your website and its users, protecting sensitive information such as login credentials and credit card numbers. Implementing HTTPS is particularly important for e-commerce sites and other websites that handle sensitive data.
9) Review Your Website’s Navigation
Navigation is critical to the user experience of your website. Ensure that your website’s navigation is intuitive and easy to use. We recommend simplifying your website’s menu structure, and using descriptive labels for your menu items. For example, instead of using generic labels such as “services”, use more descriptive and SEO-optimized labels such as “virtual events” and “corporate events” as seen on our client Reveal Event Group’s website. And, speaking of SEO, here are 10 steps we compiled for improving your own search engine optimization strategy.
This will help your visitors find the information they need quickly and easily and can lead to increased engagement, lower bounce rates, and ultimately, higher conversions.
And, last but certainly not least…
10) Test Your Website
Testing your website regularly is crucial to ensuring that it functions correctly and provides a great user experience. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to test your website:
- Test your website on a range of devices, operating systems, and browsers to ensure that it functions correctly and provides a consistent user experience across all platforms.
- Use a tool like Google Search Console or a broken link checker to identify broken links on your website.
- Try Grammarly or Hemingway Editor to check your website’s content for errors.
- Test your website’s load time via a tool like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix and quickly identify any issues that may be slowing it down.
From design and content to SEO and security, it’s important to give every aspect of your website the attention it deserves. With a fresh and functional website, you’ll be sure to attract new customers and drive business growth. So bookmark this post, go grab your virtual cleaning supplies, brew a cup of fresh coffee, and get started!
Or, get in touch and find out about our custom (and very comprehensive) Website Audit services – we’d love to help you ensure your website presence is optimized and showcasing your business in the best light possible.
