5 Signs That Your Website Needs Optimization
Your website is a business card of your business. It’s valuable digital real estate where you fully control the narrative and get a chance to showcase your business. However, content is not the only important aspect of your website. If your website is not performing well, its visitors are likely to not even get to your content. It’s important to make sure that your website is well optimized so you don’t lose your visitors before you ever get a chance to talk to them. In our time, we have seen many beautifully designed websites fail because they were not well optimized. Based on our experience, we have created a list of the red flags you should be aware of when you develop a website.
Low-speed load
Online consumers have increasingly high expectations. The majority of them would close the website if the load time exceeds 3 seconds. Therefore, load speed is one of the key parameters which need to be optimized first. Start by making sure you eliminate all the unused components - whether it is unused Javascript, excessive imagery, or plugins. Also, make sure that the images you use are properly compressed and in jpeg or jpg format. Often, just these actions help to increase the load speed by quite a few points.
A sudden drop in traffic
It is normal for the website traffic to fluctuate to an extent. It can happen based on seasonality or algorithm updates. However, if you notice a sudden drop in traffic for which you don’t have an explanation, it is a sign that your website needs a review. Perhaps you were subjected to manual action - a punishment given to the website for violating Google policies. If that is the case, you would need to check what could be problematic and then ask for a manual review.
High bounce rate
An important metric to track together with your traffic is your bounce rate. Bounce rate measures the percentage of website visitors who leave after visiting just one page. A high bounce rate means that visitors are not interested in staying on your website - whether because of its content or poor performance. If your website has a high bounce rate, carefully review it to identify the root cause of a bounce and ways to keep customers more engaged.
Low checkout and purchases
Even if all the other metrics on the website perform well, if your traffic doesn’t convert to a specific action, then you have a problem. It can be tricky to point out why the traffic on your website doesn’t bring conversions. You would need to look at your overall sales funnel to identify the root cause. The tools which track customer behavior, such as Hotjar and Google Analytics, will help you with that.
Low search engine rankings - SEO
If your website is not highly ranked by search engines, you would get much less traffic than your better-performing competitors. You can improve your ranking by revamping your overall SEO strategy. This includes keywords strategy, content, as well as technical aspects of optimization. Keep in mind that SEO is a long-term, continuous process and you wouldn’t see the results right away.
Do you want to find out if your website needs optimisation? Take a quiz to find out!