So, you have developed a website about a decade back and are done with it. Now you can expect to earn revenue regularly from this one-time investment.
Do you think the above-mentioned sentences can be reconciled?
Unfortunately, in the competitive digital world of today, there’s no such set-and-forget thing in website development.
You might have launched a state-of-the-art website in 2012 by following the highest designing standards of that time. But trust us when we say, the website has become totally outdated as of today. The designing effects or device usability – everything wears out as your website begins to age.
By now, you might be wondering that we are about to preach another cliched web designing tips of 2020 for you to develop a new website.
Stop right there.
Website optimization tips
Though we don’t undermine the value of a feature-rich new website, we also understand the amount of resources and time required for designing a new one.
So, why not make some small optimizations and modernize your existing site!
- Start with HTTPS
- Adopt Anti Spam Measures
- Speed Optimization
- Content Update
- Reduce Friction
- Mobile Usability
Sounds interesting? It sure is! Check out how to accomplish the same.
1. Start with HTTPS
Do you know that the average cost occurred due to a malware attack on a company is $2.6 million (source: Accenture)! Naturally, data security has become a priority these days.
This compels webmasters to enable HTTPS to protect the transmission of elements – from the user to the server (such as personal data and password) and from the server to the user (such as the displayed content).
In fact, Google (arguably the most used search engine) marks unencrypted sites as “not secure”. This may evoke a negative brand impression and drive away the qualified leads from your site.
According to a study by Whynothttps, globally 20% of websites still do not use HTTPS. If you belong to this category, it’s high time to purchase an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate and enable HTTPS.
HTTPS/SSL certificate is worth considering the security protocol that every website should have in modern times. For website optimization and customers’ security purpose, HTTPS assures online visitors about their data safety. For a website type like e-commerce, payment processors, financial institutions, education where numerous subdomains are required, an SSL certificate is a must. If you are wondering about the types of SSL then, cheap wildcard SSL is an ideal security protocol for securing subdomains.
2. Adopt Anti Spam Measures
Comment or contact form spam from automated bots is a genuine concern for website owners.
After developing a website, you may want to allow the visitors to contact you or post a comment on your forum.
It’s indeed a fair effort to interact with your audience. But suddenly, you find your comment box or inbox flooded with spam messages as the bots have started adding junks.
These messages are a sure nuisance. They simply clutter your inbox and waste your time. And the comment spammers can irritate valuable traffic and drive them away.
Stressed?
No worry. There are various anti-spam measures you may adopt. For instance, you may filter out frequent spam keywords through the comment blacklist.
Also, Google’s reCAPTCHA security system has advanced well to protect your site from spammers. The latest reCAPTCHA v3 generates a score for every request you send to reCAPTCHA without causing any user friction. The score depends on the interaction with your site and allows you to take suitable action.
Here, a score around 1.00 signals a good human interaction and a score closer to 0.00 indicates that the traffic is likely to be generated by bots.
Isn’t it a cool way to detect abusive traffic on your website? So learn Best Traffic Driving Messaging Apps.
3. Speed Optimization
Regardless of the type of device, your site must load quickly. Remember, most users tend to leave a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load (source: Google).
You may use a tool like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to audit your site and optimize it accordingly.
To enhance your page loading speed, you may try the following practices:
- Compress image files without affecting their You may use Photoshop for this.
- Leverage browser caching. The browser can cache various information like JavaScript files, images, and more. That way when a visitor returns to your site, the browser need not reload the entire web page. Rather, it can use the stored data to load quickly.
- Instead of cramming your site with internal JS and CSS files, put them into the external files. However, this requires some technical expertise. So, we recommend you to contact any professional website development company.
4. Content Update
If you haven’t uploaded any fresh content on your site for a long time, it’s high time to start that. Search engines prefer to rank informative, relevant, fresh, and optimized content.
Also, users may get frustrated while applying your expired 2013 promotion code. A lack of website activity evokes a negative brand impression and makes people think your business is inactive.
So, add new content or optimize the existing ones with relevant keywords to stay up-to-date.
5. Reduce Friction
Are you worried about a sudden drop in the conversion rate?
Is your bounce rate going higher than you expect?
These website metrics may indicate that the users are getting irritated with site-friction and leaving your site.
We recommend you to remove those extraneous fields from your contact form and include a guest check out option.
Also, keep looking for broken links, inactive buttons, redirect loops, and other barriers that affect usability.
6. Improve Mobile Usability
More than half of all web traffic comes through mobile (source: Statista). Such a scenario demands you to make your site mobile-friendly, or better yet, mobile-first.
Make sure the design of your website is intuitive and the text and images are responsive and adequately fit the screen size. That way, the users can get rid of the hassles of side-scrolling and pinching a page.
Also, ensure that the buttons and menu items are quite large and easy to press.
You may use a tool like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to learn whether your website is easily navigable on mobile and modify the site accordingly.
If you are not a tech geek, seek assistance from a reputed website design company. The experienced professionals can serve you with the best results.
Conclusion
These little modifications here and there on your website may deliver you prompt results.
Try these out and thank us later!
