An enterprise or association has an absolute necessity; it’s a website that is not just for pure decoration or an accessory to them. However, setting up a website and forgetting it is not a way of a successful website. Trends in websites are constantly changing and what is working for you right now might not be the same for you next year. These instances can be easily noticed by the visitors of your site and if you don’t keep up, this will have a negative impact on your enterprise.
Discovering that most of your mobile users are exiting as immediately with just split seconds after logging in means trouble for your website. Also, your most important keyword is not showing up on Google even after a couple of months after launch. Well, that’s even worse. These flags of red are just “setting our feathers on fire”. Note that even small enterprises and their small enterprise websites are of the same caliber as billion-dollar companies. Plus, the changes in the web is so fast that even when you have a website built, three or four years ago it is not acceptable nowadays to consumers. For this, you need to overhaul your website.
Refreshing and redesigning were often thought as like moving on to a newer platform especially when we are planning for a website upgrade. By this, we are thinking to give the site a “facelift” or a new paint job and meticulously rewriting its overall content. For this reason, try to look for the vital parts of a site beneficial for upgrades. Here are some of those worth spending time parts for upgrades.
Page Speed
Page load speed and time to the first byte are the ways to describe page speed. Page load speed is the time it takes to fully display the content on a specific page. On the other hand, time to the first byte refers to how long it takes for your browser to receive the first byte of information from the web server. Either way, whether you look at it on each side, a faster page speed is always better. Faster pages affect both rank and conversion as observed by many people.
An important part of any website’s user experience is clearly its page loading time. Most the times, we are forgetting its crucial part because we are accommodating for the content functionality. We are too focused on a better aesthetic design in our web pages thus disregarding its effect on our website. Sad to say, these details are often skipped by visitors. They are often particular with speeding the bells and whistles in our websites. Furthermore, the page loading time is becoming a more important piece of the puzzle in search engine rankings.
Leverage browser caching
Style sheets, images, JavaScript files and more are the information that the browsers cache a lot. In this sense, the browser doesn’t need to reload the entire page when a visitor comes back to your site. Also, you can use a tool like YSlow to check if you have an expiration date set for your cache. Then, depending on how long that information to be cached set your “expires” header. A year is a practical time period if your site design changes frequently. Try to look for more information about leveraging caching in Google.
Improve server response time
The hosting solution you use, the software your servers use, the resources each page uses and all the amount of traffic all affects your server response time. If you want to improve your service response time, try to look for performance bottlenecks. These are the slow database queries, a lack of adequate memory to fix them or even slow routing. Under 200ms is the optimum server response time. Try to learn more about optimizing your time to first byte.
Responsive Web DesignThe 5 website update you need RIGHT NOW!
A site that is able to adapt the varying screen sizes used is a website with a responsive web design. This kind of website automatically reformats to give a better experience for the users regardless of what their device is. This can give your site a lot of benefits as well as keeping in touch with Google recommendations. Still looking for more?
The content and pages are automatically flexible and can be used across varying screen resolutions with a responsive website. Basically, no matter what device you are viewing the website on, the optimal viewing experience of the user is maintained. Adding its ease of navigation is the minimal scrolling and resizing.
By providing the best possible user experience, the chances of the visitors returning is high since they all have a positive opinion of your website. This is because of the fact that the responsive design provides better accommodation for the users.
Conversion Rate Optimization
A little of the biggest optimization challenges is often attributed to the site itself and most of it is due to the lack of organizational support. For this reason, without carrying out a case for CRO, you might be in trouble. Wherein you are in a situation where you can’t immediately tackle what you know of the biggest optimization issue.
Try to start small, if you are caught up in this situation. Run a few surveys and collect feedbacks pointing to a potential confusion in your conversion funnel. In addition, run small scale tests to optimize the elements if you are the one doing the update of the site. A mini CRO test to improve these metrics through surveys and testing is advisable. This can then be used to demonstrate the value of CRO and get your association on board.
A well-designed site and no matter how many of the visitors are converted into users don’t guarantee that it’s easier and painless for them leading to better results for you. If there are issues in your conversion funnel that should be addressed, spending more on it is not the answer. A CRO works with dealing and identifying these problems first. Remember that it’s not just converting anyone. It’s about looking for people who will love your product and help you in your marketing efforts. Where they can tell everyone they know how great you are to deal with.
Personalization
The product line of the real-time content optimizing engine Dynamic Yield has the basis of personalization. The enterprise delivers more relevant advertising by using “the library of information”. These are collected on site visitors and an ad network-like content management model with a goal of increasing conversion rates. Omni-channel personalization and A/B testing are the choice of marketers that offers optimized display campaigns. Plus, publishers get real-time headline optimization. Added by, tools that allow for article performance comparison and lastly a user-customized content delivery.
The importance of personalization has become evident ever since the brands are changing into content providers and more customers are engaged in seeing a customized content. It’s now a practice for marketing with a display, mobile, and email. Other marketers are seeing it as the only way to reach out to the customers. The common Internet media promises have been long realized and among ad agencies and are currently ineffective that’s why a shift has begun among marketers.
Here are a few tips to keep in mind to refine personalization strategies and improve on existing efficient approach.
Think widely, an omni-channel. Create and maintain a cohesive experience by keeping personalized messaging consistent. Remember that users are constantly searching to shopping cart reminders sent by email and use that information to recommend products. Not only it sets a precedent and ups user familiarity with personalized ads but it also makes for more useful advertising.
Engaging Images
We are entering a new time zone of image creation and content. This means that we are living in the era of the “camera in everyone’s pocket” with more than 2.5 billion is in use.
Nowadays, social media performance often predicts future performance. It’s all about the wheel. For you to be data driven, use the content that has already been successful. Stay on the high ground and stand on the shoulders of giants! You’ll be removing the guesswork from your social media strategy once you do this.
If a quote image is doing well on one page, it might do the same on the other page (compared to the other quotes images on that page. We’ll talk about this since it relates to creating images that are engaging for social media. If you want to start posting some engaging images, this means that you want to get a lot more engagement. Because you want the branding benefits, take the time to recreate it, the tested engaging quote image that you like.
The original page doesn’t own that quote on the image after all. You’ll get rewards if it is exposed to a lot of people. When you post a link to your blog or website, it will result in more engagement and reach. Also, because Facebook shows that post to more people, more engagement means a positive effect on your image.
This will eventually turn out to be an opportunity for you to turn those website or blog visitors into customers!! By using the audience-tested content, you can make better decisions considering the posted engaging content.
So what do think of this?
Testing from scratch is not needed since the Internet is filled with already tested content. As we have discussed earlier–stay focused and standing on the shoulders of the giants, do what is told. That’s the very basic principle of this entire strategy. Lastly, social media will eventually become a lot more fun once you are seeing your engagement go up.
Related: 8 Good Reasons to Redesign Your Website