You must have opted for a trendy parallax website way back around five years ago. If you request a website audit, a notable suggestion will be to optimize your website as the earlier version is outdated. Your website needs to be optimized for SEO and implementing a Comodo SSL Certificate could be a starting point for website security.
At this juncture, you must be wondering whether to make changes to your current website or whether to build one from scratch. Before you start making changes to your website, you need to know about some of the essential optimizations for your website.
Be mobile-friendly
Mobiles account for half of the internet traffic globally. As per Statista, mobile accounted for 52.6% of website traffic worldwide in the last quarter of 2019. No wonder search engines factor in mobile-friendliness as one of the SERP ranking factors.
You must optimize your images for mobile and use shorter meta titles to help mobile users. While optimizing for content, do keep in mind that small is more. Also, avoid pop-ups as it is challenging to work around them when using a mobile.
Optimize for search engines
You must ensure that your website is easily searchable by users. To ensure this, you must optimize for search engines. Get the help of an SEO expert and create an SEO strategy that your team needs to follow.
There are different aspects to be studied and start by doing an SEO audit of the site and start by identifying proper keywords for the website. Next, optimize the meta tags for all your pages. If you are using WordPress, you may utilize SEO plug-ins like Yoast to help in your activities.
Is the website taking time to load?
Research shows that websites tend to take more time to load on a mobile. As per Backlinko, a web page takes 87.84% longer to load on mobile than a desktop. Furthermore, according to Unbounce, around 70% of consumers link up page loading speeds to their willingness to buy from that company.
You need to periodically test the page load speeds using tools like GTMetrix and PageSpeed Insights from Google. Based on your findings, you may need to deploy various optimization techniques like squeezing image sizes or moving to a faster server.
Move to HTTPS
One of the basic requirements of an e-commerce website was to adhere to the PCI-DSS guidelines. According to these guidelines, it became a necessity to encrypt the communication between your web server and the visitor’s browser.
Hence the need to move the website to HTTPS and procure an SSL Certificate. As there are different types of SSL brands available and you can opt for anyone as per your site’s requirement. For instance, if you need a single domain at a cost-effective price, then, comodo SSL certificate should be your choice.
Moreover, since a critical 2018 update, Google has been penalizing non-HTTPS websites by prioritizing the HTTPS websites. It led to a loss in important SERP rank, which led to an inherent need to move to HTTPS.
Understand user intent
As a great UX designer, you must put yourself in the shoes of the visitor. You must understand what the visitor is looking for in your site. You will need to create the user journey through your website accordingly.
You must also consider aligning the possible search queries to content on your site. Again, having a great UX design also pulls more visitors to your website. And it means more than aesthetics. You can use various tools like Hotjar that allows you to collect feedback from visitors on how to improve website UX.
Let users interact more
Good user experience isn’t necessarily that far removed from a poor user experience. It can be small, subtle differences that can have a considerable impact.
— Nathanael Boehm
When you are producing great content, it should be shared among the target market. What is the best way to spread messages on your website? Why not use the acquaintances of your visitors? It includes sharing content over social media platforms to reach a vast audience.
Include CTA buttons
You need to have cleverly crafted call-to-action (CTA) buttons to ensure improved chances of conversions. HubSpot studied over 330,000 CTAs and concluded that personalized CTA buttons perform 202% better. The latest fad is using a Smart CTA that is adapted to a visitor based on their location, stage in the buyer’s journey, etc.
While creating the CTA button, ensure that it has a contrasting color vis-à-vis the background with a clear text, like “Access for Free”. Positioning the CTA button also matters, and ideally, it should be above the fold.
Update website content
Updating your content will help you address the pain points of your target market. Analyzing traffic on your website will allow you to have an overview of the pages that visitors visit most on your site. You can then make suitable changes to the overall website content that will appeal to your visitors. While updating or removing web pages, make sure to have proper 301 redirects so that visitors are taken to a live page.
Conclusion
While you may have decided to make overwhelming changes to your website, you must first understand the need for making these changes. Building a new website comes with spending lots of dollars and allocating resources. It would have been better if you optimized the earlier site by incorporating the essential optimizations. You can start by deploying a Comodo SSL Certificate. We have discussed some of the necessary changes in your website that will enable you to continue with your earlier website.