No matter what kind of industry you’re in, having a great quality website can make a huge difference to the success of your business.
Many businesses might not feel tech-savvy enough to keep their website up to date, or worry about the know-how and cost of maintaining it.
With your website being one of your most important marketing assets, we thought we’d compile our tips on how to optimise your website performance in 2023. If you want some advice on how you can improve your website performance this year, or to benchmark against others, give us a shout and we’d be happy to offer our thoughts!
Below, we’ve shared our top six factors we think every business should consider as a priority this quarter.
Things to consider
#1 Does your website reflect your brand effectively?
Visitors to your site should be able to understand straight away what you do, your purpose and what makes you different. If you’re a market leader – or want to become one – your website should reflect that.
Make sure your website is designed creatively and that it stands out from your competitors, and keep your tone of voice distinctive and consistent across your whole site.
#2 Does your website fully consider your target audience?
If visitors to your site can’t quickly find what they’re looking for they will leave the page – which has a knock-on effect by increasing your bounce rate and impacting your search rankings.
Take a step back and think about what visitors to your site will be looking for, and the best way to get them there. Review the structure of key pages in the eyes of your customer to make sure it mirrors the information they need to see, and that this aligns with what your objectives are too.
The strongest user experience (UX) is crucial to engage in the clearest, most logical and compelling way with your different target segments.
#3 Does your website load fast enough to rank well?
Search engine algorithms have changed a lot in the last couple of years, and page load speed has a significant effect on your search engine ranking. People are also impatient, and will leave your site after only a few seconds if it doesn’t load quickly enough!
Consider things like the images on your site – are they optimised to load as quickly as possible? Also is there any extra animated functionality that you don’t really need, that’s slowing things down? People’s expectations of websites are constantly increasing, so make sure you match them!
#4 Is your organic SEO creating relevant traffic and leads?
So, you’ve had SEO work done, but do you actually know what the SEO agency did? Transparency is key – make sure their work was done correctly and effectively.
SEO also needs measuring and assessing on an ongoing basis as web traffic and your competitors gradually evolve over time. Make sure you always know where your opportunities are to out rank your competitors!
#5 Is your website fully optimised for all devices?
Google prioritises mobile traffic first, so if your site isn’t running properly on mobile devices your rankings will take a hit.
Be sure to fully check all pages and aspects of your site and how they work on mobile. Mobile has less functionality than a desktop, so the content should be stripped down to work intuitively and quickly.
#6 Does your website fulfil your strategic objectives?
There are many objectives that you can set for your site and these need prioritising – from warm prospects and cold prospects to eCommerce and smaller sales vs larger account sales – the list goes on.
The hierarchy of the website needs to mirror your strategic objectives and measurement is key. Are you getting the relevant traffic you need for your key target areas? Consider whether changes need to be made to increase your traffic and enquiries.
What to do next?
If your website is no longer fit for purpose and you need support to get it to where it needs to be, contact us for an initial chat. We specialise in developing B2B and not-for-profit websites from large, complex sites to landing pages for lead generation and internal intranets.
Email hello@weareembrace.com or speak to Ciaran, our Digital Director, on 01625 789050.
Get in touch to chat about developing your brand, marketing, creative content or website.
This latest thinking article was written by:
Jack Lenton
Senior Content Executive
