Improve Your Website: A Quick Checklist

First impressions are huge. Functionality is huge. Relevance is huge. These set the tone for what to expect from your website, brand, and business. Below are a few important questions to ask yourself as you go through your website to help improve your online presence.

Does your site have a clear objective?

From the first time your website loads do you set a clear path for visitors within seconds, whether it’s the homepage or a landing page, to your online advertisement? Having relevant information is the first thing to touch on. Is it to-the-point? How much information are you displaying? Too much can overwhelm and confuse the user.

How’s that Navigation Menu looking?

Cramped for space? Try moving some links to a sub-navigation menu. Is the menu easy to follow and functional? In most cases, it’s best to keep it simple. If there are too many options off the get-go your site may appear chaotic and unorganized. Again, first impressions are a thing.

Are your images optimized for the web?

There is a lot of chatter behind this and for good reason. Images are a very effective source of content. They help people process/retain information more quickly than text alone. With that said, large image/media files slow your page load time down dramatically. Slow loading time gives your visitors a poor user experience and increases bounce rate. Plus, Google considers your site page speed when ranking your site in search. That’s a no-brainer to get those images ready for web traffic. Check out this post from Hall for more on optimizing images.

Is your site available on multiple screen sizes?

It’s 2017! Believe it or not, half of all Google searches happen on mobile devices. If a user is unable to navigate your site easily on a mobile device this could be a problem. Remember, we’ve been talking about the importance of user impressions. If your site is dating back before responsive design, it’s probably time to upgrade. By probably, I mean it is.

Are you blogging?

Relevant content on your site helps your search rankings, supplies your visitors with relevant information on your business or industry, and can make the site more personal.

How easy is it to contact you?

People visiting your site will have questions at some point or will want to give feedback. You’ll have to decide what your business needs are, whether it’s a live chat or contact forms for support, sales leads, product inquiries, etc. Having the ability to contact you is extremely important and provides legitimacy to your business. So, make it easy. Have a page dedicated to contacting you and make it easy to find by putting it in the Navigation Menu or in the Footer.

Are you testing?

Have you been wondering why a call-to-action isn’t working? Have you tested it against other CTAs? Try changing the verbiage and see what works better. How about that contact form that people keep avoiding or abandoning? Consider removing fields if you have too many and keeping only the most important. If you are finding these issues strike home you should consider A/B testing to see where you find the most success.

Keep these questions in mind when considering what changes need to be made to your site to drive traffic and retain visitor engagement.

See how Hall can help increase your demand.