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Optimizing your website means systematically improving your website’s performance to make sure it is tailored to meet your business goals, whether you are trying to increase sales, get more leads or get more readers. All visitors to your website are trying to accomplish something and optimizing your website makes it easier for them to do it successfully. Optimizing website performance is a win-win situation: your visitors get a better user experience (UX) and you get a better conversion rate and more sales. Here is a brief guide to help your optimization efforts.
Know your target audience
Website optimization is not just about having a site that quickly loads. You must know what your audience wants and needs, and tailor your site to meet those needs. You also must design your site so visitors can efficiently get to the location on your site where they can make a decision and take action. Be sure your business goals are coordinated with your customer’s goals.
Monitor your site for bottlenecks
Use page speed monitoring to find any bottlenecks on your site. Check the loading speed for your landing page, home page, checkout page and any pages with a call to action (CTA). Once you know where your site is performing poorly, you can work with your host provider and website design team to diagnose and fix the problems.
Make your site mobile-friendly
Mobile devices are ubiquitous, so assume that many visitors will use a smartphone or tablet to access your site. A site that loads quickly on a desktop or laptop will not necessarily load quickly on a mobile device unless you make an effort to ensure your site is mobile-friendly. Consider using a responsive web design (RWD) that will adapt to the screen size of the device your visitor is using to review your site. This way, you won’t have to maintain both a desktop site and a mobile site, and your visitors will get the same UX regardless of the type of device they are using.
Host static resources on a separate server
If your site contains numerous graphics and images that cause slow loading times, consider hosting those resources on a separate server. That way, you experience better server stability that can make your website more responsive, especially if you experience a surge in visitors. For best results, compress your images, as this greatly reduces the time it takes your server to process a request for an image.
Test UX
Put yourself in the place of a visitor and periodically test your website’s performance in real time. Use desktops, laptops and mobile devices to see how responsive your website is and get a better understanding of UX. Don’t just limit yourself to an office setting. Try using mobile hotspots in public places to see how network congestion could affect the responsiveness of your site for users. There are tools available to simulate UX, but nothing beats real-world experience when evaluating your website’s performance.
Poor website performance negatively affects both UX and your bottom line. StatusCake can help by providing you with prompt downtime alerts and page speed monitoring services to let you quickly address performance issues if they occur.
StatusCake Team
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